Suspected assassin Luigi Mangione was apparently left startled after McDonald’s employees recognized him after five days on the run.
Mangione, 26, was taken into custody on firearm charges Monday afternoon at the fast food joint in Altoona, Pennsylvania, five days after he allegedly shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, 50, outside of a Manhattan hotel.
Sources told DailyMail.com that several staff members noticed the masked man, who sat quietly reading after ordering a drink from the fast food establishment.
One employee then called the authorities after a customer also mentioned quietly to them that he resembled the man that authorities had been hunting for nearly a week.
When police arrived, they found the suspect wearing a medical mask and looking at a silver laptop computer, with his backpack on the floor near the table, according to charging documents.
As soon as he pulled down the mask, rookie Altoona Police Officer Tyler Frye said he and his partner immediately recognized him as the suspect accused of gunning down Thompson on December 4.
‘We just didn’t think twice about it. We knew that was our guy,’ Frye told reporters at a news conference Monday night.
Police say Mangione proceeded to give officers a New Jersey driver’s license bearing the name Mark Rosario with the birth date of July 21, 1998.
When a cop then asked him if he had been to New York recently, he ‘began to shake,’ the charging documents say.
Luigi Mangione, 26, was taken into custody on firearm charges Monday afternoon
‘He became visibly nervous, kind of shaking at that question. And he didn’t really answer it directly,’ Altoona Police Chief Derek Swope said.
‘The suspect didn’t have to say a lot after that question to show that he was very nervous about [the officers].’
But cops at the scene soon realized the New Jersey driver’s license was a fake, at which point one officer told him that he was under official police investigation and if he lied about his identity, he would be arrested.
Upon hearing this, Mangione allegedly provided officers with his true identity.
When he was then asked why he lied about his name, the suspect is said to have replied, ‘I clearly shouldn’t have.’
In the end, Frye said, Mangione ‘was very cooperative with us’ and ‘didn’t give us too many issues.
‘Once we found out his identity, we took it from there,’ said the rookie, who has only been on the force for six months.
Mangione ultimately went calmly and quietly with officers outside of the McDonald’s, and staff members said there was minimal disruption to their work day.
‘We all just want to know why and how he ended up in our little town, because it doesn’t make any sense,’ one employee told DailyMail.com.
‘There isn’t a lot of footfall around here, it’s not a big city’.
Mangione was denied bail Monday evening, and is expected to face further charges in the coming days for the point-blank killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson
He reportedly gave police a fake ID when they started to question him
Mangione is now facing charges of forgery, firearm carried without a license, tampering with records or ID, instruments of crime, false identification to law enforcement.
He was denied bail Monday evening, and is expected to face further charges in the coming days for the point-blank killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
The wealthy CEO was in the Big Apple to host UnitedHealthcare’s annual investor meeting, where he was set to detail the insurance company’s massive profits for the year.
Surveillance camera footage showed him walking outside a Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan when he was shot at point-blank range by three bullets.
The shell casings were later found to have the words ‘deny,’ ‘defend’, ‘depose’ written on them, in an apparent attack on health insurance practices.
He was located by staff members at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania
It is believed Mangione was angry at the way the medical insurance industry treated a sick relative, according to the New York Post.
Further details on that relative or their identity have not been shared, although online obituaries show Mangione lost a grandmother in 2013 and a grandfather in 2017.
His X account also shows an x-ray of a complicated neck surgery.
Mangione is also said to have had a manifesto on him when he was arrested, which reportedly mentioned UnitedHealthcare by name, noting the grandiose size of the company and how much profits it makes.
The manifesto went on to condemn health insurance companies more broadly for placing profits over care, the Times reports.
The former valedictorian was also in possession of a 3D-printed pistol and black silencer, with police noting that the pistol was loaded wit one Glock magazine comprising six 9mm full-metal jacket rounds.
One loose 9mm hollow-point round was also located.
Mangione is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson at point-blank range on December 5
New York City police had been searching for the shooter for days before Mangione was arrested
Officers from Altoona Police Department remained stationed inside the restaurant Monday night, as surveillance footage showed the moment Mangione was arrested.
Authorities later confirmed that Mangione alighted a Greyhound bus opposite the McDonalds at around 9am on Monday morning, after leading NYPD cops on a cross-country chase.
Staff at nearby restaurants say they were unaware that the killer had been apprehended just yards from their doors, simply recalling that local police cars had been in the vicinity.
Officers now believe Mangione had been in Pennsylvania for several days following Thompson’s December 4 murder, and may have previously spent time in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, according to the New York Times.
‘We do have an idea how he got from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, but there are some gaps in time,’ Lt. Col. George Bivens said.
‘And so before we start laying out a timeline of his travel, we really need to work through all of that.’
Mangione is now due back in court for a preliminary hearing on December 23.