Luigi Mangione newest: Gun discovered on suspect matches shell casings on the crime scene, police say

In the days since the 26-year-old was arrested in a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, comments from friends and family have painted a picture of the murder suspect.

Those close to Mangione seem “shocked” by the events that have unraveled in the past week.

“Unfortunately, we cannot comment on news reports regarding Luigi Mangione,” said the family in a statement posted on X by Luigi’s cousin Nino Mangione, a Republican member of the lower house of Maryland’s state legislature. “We only know what we have read in the media.”

One former Penn classmate told The Independent that she couldn’t believe the news.

“It’s really shocking…He never gave off a weird, creepy, Unabomber vibe” in college, she said. He didn’t post passionately about social causes in undergrad, so “I guess something really took a turn,” she added.

Some of his friends have discussed how Mangione suffered from debilitating back pain.

“He said his lower vertebrae were almost like a half-inch off, and I think it pinched a nerve. Sometimes he’d be doing well and other times not,” one friend told the New York Times. “He knew that dating and being physically intimate with his back condition wasn’t possible. I remember him telling me that, and my heart just breaks.”

After his arrest, Mangione was charged and arraigned on five Pennsylvania offenses including forgery, falsely identifying himself, and carrying a gun without a license.

On Monday, he made a brief appearance at the Blair County Courthouse in Hollidaysburg where he was informed of the charges against him and said he understood.

The suspect returned to the Blair County Courthouse as he faced an extradition hearing Tuesday after New York prosecutors charged him with second-degree murder in connection with last week’s brazen killing of Thompson in Midtown Manhattan.

“It’s completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people and their lived experience,” Mangione yelled as he was escorted in handcuffs into the courthouse.

Blair County District Attorney Peter Weeks said both Pennsylvania and New York’s governors remain confident they can get the warrant to transfer him back to the Empire State before the 30-day deadline.

Mangione was denied bail, is fighting extradition, and will remain in a Pennsylvania jail. He is set to plead not guilty to all charges, his attorney Thomas Dickey told NewsNation on Tuesday.

Read everything we know about Luigi Mangione here.

The gun found on the murder suspect is a positive match with the shell casings found at the crime scene, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Wednesday.

“We got the gun in question back from Pennsylvania… we were able to match that gun to the three shell casings found in Midtown at the scene of the homicide,” she said.

Lab results also showed a match between Mangione’s fingerprints with prints found on both the water bottle and the Kind bar near the scene of the homicide in Midtown, Tisch said.

The man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson followed Richard Dawkins and RFK Jr, tweeted about neuroscience and Japanese birth rates, and shared posts about how to think more logically.

The 26-year-old was fascinated by AI and decision theory; pro-technology but anti-smartphones; secular and scientific in his outlook, but in favour of religion on Darwinian grounds.

What does it all mean? Luigi Mangione’s worldview might not be familiar to most Americans, and it’s certainly not a common one among politically-motivated killers. Nevertheless, his social media posts, and the users he engaged with, mark him out indelibly as a very specific type of online person – one that’s intimately familiar to me.

”Increasingly looks like we’ve got our first gray tribe shooter, and boy howdy is the media not ready for that,” wrote the journalist and extremism expert Robert Evans, who analyzed Mangione’s online life earlier this week.

There’s no single accepted name for this loose, extremely online subculture of bloggers, philosophers, shitposters and Silicon Valley coders. “The gray tribe” is one term; ”the rationalist movement” is another.

Read the full story.

Joe Rogan chalked up the country’s mixed reactions to the fatal shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO to the “dirty business” of health insurance.

Rogan and his guests, filmmakers Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary, discussed the December 4 death of Brian Thompson on a Midtown Manhattan street on Tuesday’s episode of the mega-popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast.

The podcaster and his guests predicted there wouldn’t be much sympathy for the 50-year-old insurance executive due to the state of health insurance in the U.S.

“I don’t think anybody is going to be crying too hard over” Thompson’s death, Avary said.

“Maybe his family, but that’s about it,” Rogan replied. “It’s a dirty, dirty business. The business of insurance is f***ing gross. It’s gross, especially healthcare insurance.”

Read the full story.

Along with numerous fake ID cards, a ghost gun, a silencer, and a manifesto, police recovered a spiral notebook from the suspect’s belongings when he was arrested.

Luigi Mangione, 26, was arrested Monday at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania after an employee recognized him from the photos widely circulated by the NYPD.

A NYPD intelligence report, obtained by CNN, detailed that the notebook included a to-do list of tasks to be completed to carry out the killing along with “notes justifying those plans,” the outlet wrote.

Although he contemplated bombing Manhattan, he decided against the idea over concerns this method “could kill innocents,” a law enforcement source told CNN.

“He appeared to view the targeted killing of the company’s highest-ranking representative as a symbolic takedown and a direct challenge to its alleged corruption and ‘power games,’ asserting in his note he is the ‘first to face it with such brutal honesty,’” says the NYPD report.

He also mentioned Ted Kaczynski, also known as the ‘Unabomber.’

Officials also uncovered a three-page, 262-word handwritten manifesto in his belongings, which police describe as a “claim of responsibility” for the shooting. NYPD Chief Detective Joe Kenny told Fox News that he believes the handwritten pages express “some ill will toward corporate America.”

People are trying to get their hands on a green jacket that closely resembles one worn by the suspected shooter.

Footage captured the suspect — and his jacket — on his journey across Manhattan in the wake of the fatal shooting in Midtown Manhattan on December 4.

Stills of the footage has circulated the internet for days as the manhunt for the suspect was underway.

Now, the green jacket is in “high demand,” according to Complex.

A similar jacket is being sold at Macy’s, where more than 700 jackets were bought in the last 48 hours, Complex reported.

The influx may have stemmed from a popular Reddit post from late last week that linked to a Levi’s Sherpa Lined Two Pocket Hooded Trucker Jacket sold at Macy’s.