ALTOONA (TNS) — Altoona police found Luigi Mangione sitting in the back of a McDonald’s restaurant Monday in Altoona wearing a blue medical mask and looking at a silver laptop on the table.
He had a backpack near him on the floor. An officer told Mangione they were called to the restaurant on a suspicious person who matched his description.
That’s when the officers asked Mangione to pull down his mask.
The officers wrote in court documents filed Monday that they “immediately recognized him as the suspect from New York City,” meaning the fatal shooting Dec. 4 of United Health CEO Brian Thompson. The FBI has been widely sharing photos of a person of interest in connection with the killing.
The officers asked for his identification and Mangione showed a license for a “Mark Rosario” from New Jersey, with a date of birth in July, 1998.
The officers could not find the license when searching in their database.
One of the officers then asked Mangione if he had been to New York recently.
“The male became quiet and started to shake,” police wrote in an affidavit.
The officers told Mangione he was “under an official police investigation” and if he lied about his identity, he would get arrested.
That’s when Mangione admitted his true identity and date of birth, police said.
The license for Rosario was a fake, police said.
An officer asked Mangione why he lied about his name at first and Mangione replied: “Clearly I shouldn’t have.”
Police arrested Mangione on charges of forgery and false identification and handcuffed him. When they searched his backpack, they say they found a black 3D-printed pistol and 3D-printed silencer. The pistol had a metal slide and plastic handle with a metal threaded barrel, police said.
The pistol had one loaded Glock magazine with six 9 mm full metal jacket rounds, according to police. There was also “one loose 9mm hollow-point round,” police said.
Police added charges of carrying a gun without a license and providing false identification to law enforcement.
He appeared in court before a judge to face those charges at 6 p.m. Monday. In the brief appearance, the judge denied him bail, meaning he will stay in jail. He has not been charged in the CEO’s death. A motive in that killing has not been established but the words “deny, defend, depose,” were written on ammunition found at the scene. Those words are frequently used to describe insurer tactics to avoid paying claims.
Mangione turned 26 in May, had an x-ray image of a spine with four screws in it on one of his social media pages and had been reading books about chronic back pain. The Affordable Care Act allows children to stay on their parent’s health insurance until they are 26. In Pa., if a parent receives coverage through a state-based employer, they may be able to stay on until 29.
