The NYPD has released new pictures of the healthcare CEO’s assassin late Saturday night as the huge manhunt entered its fifth day.
One of the images show the killer – who is wearing a fresh coat and has a face mask on – cowering inside the back of a cab while the other sees him outside the vehicle on the road.
The images appear to have been taken inside the taxi which picked him up on 86th Street and Columbus Avenue two minutes after he left Central Park in Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
On Friday night the NYPD provided a clearer idea of the assassin’s movements after he murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
They say he entered Central Park moments after the shooting before being spotted exiting on 77th Street on the Upper West Side at 6:56 am.
Additional footage emerged on Friday evening showing the suspect in the minutes after the fatal shooting as he flew up 6th avenue on his electric bike.
The footage showed a new angle of his escape path and showed him darting across the street and into the early morning darkness of Central Park.
The 50-year-old was gunned down around 6:45 am in Midtown, hours before New Yorkers gathered in the neighborhood for the annual Christmas tree lighting at Rockefeller Center.
The father-of-two was fatally shot in the chest and leg in the targeted attack, with the killer fleeing on an electric bicycle.
Witnesses said the suspected gunman was seen waiting outside the hotel before the shooting, and knew which door Thompson was going to emerge from before shooting him at point-blank range.
Footage from after the fatal shooting showed NYPD officers performing CPR on the married father, before he was rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital in critical condition, where he was pronounced dead.
On day four of their city-wide search, the NYPD discovered a backpack in Central Park they believe to have belonged to the assassin.
However, it was later revealed that the bag did not contain the murder weapon, according to reports.
Authorities looking for the individual responsible for gunning down Thompson in the early hours of Wednesday morning found the bag inside the 843-acre park on Friday.
Sources have since told Bloomberg and NBC News that a jacket was found inside alongside Monopoly money.
Police sources couldn’t elaborate on if the jacket found was the same one seen in surveillance images.
The backpack was immediately taken to a forensic laboratory for further examination.
The bag, found placed between boulders just south of the park’s carousel, was discovered by cops on their second sweep of the park.
On Saturday, footage obtained by DailyMail.com showed teams of police divers in the water near the Bethseda fountain as part of their massive ongoing search.
Investigators later confirmed the underwater search was related to Wednesday’s ‘brazen, targeted attack’, which claimed the life of the father-of-two.
New York’s mayor Eric Adams said the ‘net is tightening’ on his killer, telling The New York Post that officers now have a name for the suspect.
He spoke as the search for Thompson’s killer entered its fourth day but said that the authorities will not disclose the suspect’s identity at this stage.
‘We don’t want to release that now,’ he said. ‘If you do, you are basically giving a tip to the person we are seeking and we do not want to give him an upper hand at all.
‘Let him continue to believe he can hide behind the mask. We revealed his face. We’re going to reveal who he is and we’re going to bring him to justice.’
On Thursday, officials said the individual had arrived into the city in late November on a bus from Atlanta, Georgia, and had been staying inside a hostel on the Upper West Side.
It was inside the hostel that a flirty exchange with a hostel worker gave police officers their first glimpse at the killer, when he was asked to lower his mask.
Prior to the killing he was caught on surveillance cameras inside a Starbucks near the Hilton Hotel where he shoot Thompson.
He is said to have bough two nutrition bars inside the chain alongside a bottle of water that was found at the scene.
The image of the backpack that was found shows what appears to be one of the bars in the side pocket.
The Chief of Detectives with the NYPD Joseph Kenny has said that they believe the assassin is either a disgruntled ex-employee or an angry client.
A motive is yet to be released, as police found bullet casings at the scene inscribed with the words ‘deny’, ‘depose’ and ‘delay’.
The messages bear similarity to Jay Feinman’s 2010 book ‘Delay, Deny, Defend’, which details ‘why insurance companies don’t pay claims and what you can do about it.’
Thompson was named UnitedHealthcare CEO in 2021 and earned a reported $10 million a year, and for several years prior, he ran the Medicare business within UnitedHealthcare.
He was slated to speak at an investor meeting at the Hilton Hotel soon after the shooting. According to a release from United Healthcare on Tuesday, he would announce the company’s hugely profitable 2025 financial outlook, including expected revenues upwards of $450 billion.
With the suspect still at large, the FBI announced on Friday night that they had also joined in the investigation for the killer, offering a $50,000 for any information that leads to a conviction.