Luigi Mangione

Luigi Nicholas Mangione was born in Towson, Maryland, to Louis and Kathleen Mangione. He grew up in the Baltimore area as the youngest of three children, with two older sisters. His paternal grandfather, Nicholas Mangione, was a prominent Maryland real estate and business developer whose enterprises encompassed country clubs, healthcare facilities, and commercial properties. Through family ancestry, Mangione acquired dual citizenship with the United States and Italy in 2008.

Following his university studies, Mangione lived in Honolulu, Hawaii, between 2022 and 2023 at a co-living space called Surfbreak, where he co-founded a local book club. In early 2024, he went on a solo backpacking trip across East and Southeast Asia, visiting countries such as Japan and Thailand.

Mangione experienced multiple chronic health difficulties, including Lyme disease in his youth, visual snow, and spondylolisthesis. His back pain worsened after a surfing incident in Hawaii, prompting him to undergo spinal fusion surgery in July 2023. In mid-2024, he stopped communicating with family and friends, leading his mother to file a missing persons report with the San Francisco Police Department in November 2024.

Mangione attended the Gilman School, an all-boys private preparatory school in Baltimore, where he competed in wrestling, soccer, track, and cross country. He taught himself computer programming during high school, co-founded the mobile gaming startup AppRoar Studios, and graduated as class valedictorian in 2016.

He subsequently enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating cum laude in 2020 with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering in computer engineering and a Master of Science in Engineering in computer and information science. His academic coursework centered on artificial intelligence and mathematics. While a freshman at the university in 2016, he founded UPGRADE (University of Pennsylvania Game Research And Development Environment), the campus's first student club dedicated to video game development.

During his collegiate years, Mangione completed an engineering internship at Johns Hopkins University, served as a user-interface programming intern on the video game Civilization VI at Firaxis Games, and worked as a counselor for Stanford University's pre-collegiate artificial intelligence program. In November 2020, he began working remotely as a data engineer for the digital car marketplace TrueCar, a position he held until February 2023.

On December 4, 2024, Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed outside the New York Hilton Midtown hotel in Manhattan, where he had arrived to attend the annual UnitedHealth Group investor conference. The masked shooter fled the scene on foot and by bicycle. Discharged shell casings recovered from the sidewalk were inscribed with the words "delay", "deny", and "depose", phrases evoking widespread criticisms of health insurance claim denial practices.

On December 9, 2024, after a five-day manhunt, Altoona police officers arrested Mangione at a McDonald's restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania, following a tip from an employee who recognized him from surveillance images. Upon questioning, Mangione initially presented a fraudulent New Jersey driver's license bearing the name Mark Rosario.

Authorities searching Mangione's possessions recovered a 3D-printed firearm, a suppressor, ammunition, and a handwritten notebook expressing hostility toward the corporate healthcare industry and addressing investigators directly.

Following his arrest, Mangione was indicted in both New York state and federal courts. In New York, prosecutors initially brought eleven charges, including first-degree murder in furtherance of terrorism and criminal weapons possession. In September 2025, New York Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro dismissed the terrorism-related murder charges due to legal insufficiency.

In the federal case, prosecutors initially sought capital punishment under a firearms-related murder charge. In January 2026, U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett dismissed the death-eligible counts as legally incompatible with the remaining charges, removing the death penalty from consideration.

On August 14, 2026, Mangione formally entered a guilty plea in federal court to two counts of interstate stalking resulting in death. During the hearing, he admitted under oath to tracking and shooting Thompson in Manhattan. Following the plea, his defense attorneys sought the dismissal of the separate New York state charges on double jeopardy grounds.

The shooting and subsequent legal case provoked extensive public debate regarding the practices of private health insurers in the United States. While many public figures and commentators condemned the act of violence, Mangione attracted notable online sympathy and protest support from critics of medical claim denials, with some internet commentators portraying him as a folk symbol.

Public opinion surveys conducted shortly after his arrest revealed sharp generational divisions, with younger demographics viewing him significantly more favorably than older respondents. Crowdfunding campaigns for his legal defense raised substantial public donations, and his courtroom appearances attracted extensive attention across traditional and social media.