On December 4th, CEO Brian Thompson was shot by 26-year-old Luigi Mangione on the street in New York. The shooter was caught on camera, but due to his covering clothing (a jacket with the hood up and a mask), he was unable to be identified except for one recording where he briefly takes his mask off to talk to a counter worker and his face is partially visible. A backpack recovered from the scene that allegedly belonged to the shooter contained only two things: a jacket and Monopoly money. Thus began a statewide manhunt for the killer with a 50,000 dollar reward for information that leads to the shooter’s arrest. He was spotted and arrested in a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania, identified by a McDonald’s employee. When arrested, he was carrying the murder weapon, multiple fake IDs, and a handwritten manifesto. The shooter used a 3D-printed “ghost gun” with a loaded Glock magazine with six 9 mm full metal jacket rounds and a 3D-printed silencer. He was held without bail at the hearing, his lawyer says he is gonna plead not guilty to “every charge”. Response has been varied, some show their support for Luigi and justify his actions against the greedy insurance company, while major news networks play up sympathy for the victim.
Here is the manifesto if you’re curious:
“To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas, but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No, the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”
