Gothamist’s Brittany Kriegstein explains who police just arrested. STAT News’s Bob Herman explains the anger resonating against UnitedHealthcare. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan and Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Rob Byers, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, in an Altoona Police Department handout photo. Photo by Altoona Police Department via Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What happened in Midtown Manhattan last week?
On Wednesday of last week, a man was shot in the United States, but this was not your average shooting. Almost immediately, people were celebrating his death, and not just the people you'd expect. There were moms on Facebook making jokes about it. There were several of those horny, copy-pasta text messages circulating around.
There was a UnitedHealthcare shooter look-alike contest over the weekend in Manhattan. At least one person got a tattoo of the suspect on Monday afternoon. Luigi Mangione got arrested, and then things really got nuts. He went from a few dozen Twitter followers to 300,000 overnight. People are thirsting for his six-pack. Luigi Mangione is brat.
The McDonald's where he was arrested has been review-bombed. People are saying there are rats behind the counter. People are saying Popeye's employees would have helped him get rid of the gun. Someone's got some explaining to do, and it's us. It's Today Explained.
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This is Peter Kafka, the host of Channels, the show about what happens when media and tech collide. And this week, I'm talking to Katie Drummond, who runs Wired. She's found a way to breathe new life into that publication by covering news.
We started covering Doge, like several stories a day, every single day. And after like a week, I sort of looked around and was like, where is everyone else?
Thank you.
Today Explained, Sean Ramos from here with Brittany Krigstein from Gothamist at WNYC in New York. She's been covering the shooting since pretty much the second it happened.
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Chapter 2: Who is Luigi Mangione and what did he do?
Now, as somebody who covers gun violence day in and day out in New York City, I can confirm that it usually does take a couple days to find people, even when the cases are pretty cut and dry, even when police say that they know exactly who they're looking for.
So I know that there's a very high threshold of evidence that the DAs need in order to bring charges and the police need in order to request search warrants and things like that. Surveillance video canvassing takes a long time. This person obviously did as well as he could to shield himself, hide his face.
We have that one picture of him smiling in the hostel that really sort of seemed to accelerate the investigation because it was a really good picture of his face. But other than that, police didn't have a ton to go on. Of course, DNA evidence takes a long time. They say he discarded a cup at Starbucks. These things all take time. So it's hard to say.
But of course, given the gravity of this case, it is it does feel surprising that That it took so long to find him and that the NYPD wasn't involved actually in catching him when it came down to it. This was just a bystander, a local person, an employee at a McDonald's in Pennsylvania.
Yeah. Tell us about what happened there. How was the shooter finally caught?
Earlier this morning in Altoona, Pennsylvania, members of the Altoona Police Department arrested Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old male on firearms charges.
So apparently he was sitting and eating at this McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania. That's about 230 some odd miles away from New York City. And he was there typing away on a laptop wearing a beanie and a medical mask. And an employee recognized him based on the photos that police had circulated, now photos that seemingly have gone around the country and back again.
And this person called the local authorities who came.
Responding officers questioned the suspect, who was acting suspiciously and was carrying multiple fraudulent IDs as well as a U.S. passport.
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