Featured Image Credit: Sarah Yenesel - Pool/Getty Images/Altoona Police Department
Topics: Luigi Mangione, Crime, US News
Rhianna Benson
Topics: Luigi Mangione, Crime, US News
A year to the day that Luigi Mangione was apprehended by police accused of the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, bodycam footage of his arrest has been released.
For those in need of a reminder, the 27-year-old was taken in by cops on 9 December 2024.
Thompson - a health insurance businessman and father-of-two - was fatally shot, aged 50, whilst leaving the Hilton Hotel on Sixth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan five days earlier.
In a document obtained by police, writing found on Mangione's person accused Thompson's company of 'abusing our country for immense profit', 'because the American public has allowed them to get away with it'.
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Despite adding that 'these parasites had it coming', the writer also insisted, 'I do apologise for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done'.
Upon his arrest, Mangione pleaded not guilty to state and federal murder charges - convictions that could result in the death penalty being used via a federal indictment.
Footage recorded on a police bodycam was released this week (9 December) by prosectors, exactly a year on Mangione's arrest.
The partial tape was made public after his attorneys argued that evidence from arrest should be disqualified, given a series of major errors.
The alleged assassin was picked up by two officers at a McDonald's in Pennsylvania who recognised him as the suspect shown in broadcast news footage in relation to the grisly killing.
Mangione can be seen sitting at a table inside the fast-food chain, wearing a medical mask.
In the clip - which is now doing the rounds on social media - after approaching Mangione, the arresting officers can be heard asking for his identification.
"Can you pull your mask down real quick for me?" one asks. After he does so, the same officer tells Mangione, who can be seen wearing an orange beanie and black coat: "Appreciate it."
The suspect the tells police his name is both 'Mark', and 'Mark Rosario'.
Informing Mangione that a fellow restaurant visitor contacted 911 to report a 'suspicious' individual that looked 'like someone', one officer asks him: "Do you have your ID on you?".
After being handed a card from his wallet, the officer calls in the identification card number.
Unfortunately for prosecutors, however, Mangione's lawyers allege that the pair of arresting officers failed to properly read the alleged killer his constitutional rights prior to placing him in handcuffs.
Police are also accused of failing to present a warrant before searching through his belongings - finding items appearing to link him to the murder, including a gun, mask and a handwritten document.
The document reads in part: "To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone."
The video was played as evidence in court earlier this week, after a hearing kicked off on 1 December at the New York Supreme Criminal Court.
If Mangione's lawyers succeed in convincing Justice Gregory Carro that some of the evidence being used by the prosecution is inadmissible, it could restrict what gets included during the incoming full-fledged trial.