Luigi Mangione, 26, was charged with murder late Monday in the Dec. 4 shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City after police in Altoona, Pa., were called to a McDonald's over reports of a male matching the description of the photographed suspect in the highly publicized case.
At a New York Police Department press conference on Monday afternoon, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told reporters that Mangione was someone who had grown up in Baltimore and that his last known address was in Honolulu.
In the aftermath of Mangione’s arrest, news organizations have searched for clues about Mangione’s background and his potential motive, including in comments from family and friends. According to several statements posted to social media and shared with the press, a vague portrait has begun to emerge of a young man who complained of chronic back pain and may have undergone spinal surgery before he appears to have stopped communicating with people — including family members — months ahead of the Dec. 4 shooting. (His most recent social media post was a retweet on X on June 10.)
Based on the statements and interviews that have been made public so far, the news of Mangione’s arrest seems to have come as a shock to those who knew him.
Aaron Cranston, who graduated in 2016 with Mangione at Gilman School in Baltimore, told the New York Times that Mangione was a smart and ambitious student, and it was hard to think of him as a criminal.
Cranston also said that while he and Mangione did not stay close after graduating from high school, he and some other Gilman School graduates were sent a message earlier this year from Mangione's family, who had apparently not heard from him for several months after he had back surgery and were trying to track him down.
R.J. Martin told CNN that he met Mangione at Surfbreak, the co-living space near Honolulu's Ala Moana park's beach that Martin co-founded and where Manigone lived from January to June 2022.
Martin described Mangione as someone who led a book club for some of the Surfbreak residents and enjoyed doing active activities such as hiking and yoga. But he also remembered when Mangione first moved to Hawaii, he took a surf lesson and ended up “in bed for about a week” in pain.
In a conversation with the New York Times, Martin said that after the surf lesson injury, Mangione told Martin that he wasn't in a romantic relationship because "he knew that dating and being physically intimate with his back condition wasn't possible."
He told CNN that while he does remember Mangione being part of group conversations about capitalism and the American health care system, he doesn’t ever remember Mangione getting “upset or angry” or talking about threats, guns or violence.
Although they lost touch after Mangione left Surfbreak, Martin said he knew that Mangione had undergone spinal surgery sometime in 2023. According to Martin, the last time the two texted was in April about potentially setting up a phone call, but that never happened. Then, on June 23, Martin said he texted Mangione, “Where in the world are you?” and never got a response.
Another former Surfbreak member, Jackie Wexler, told a Honolulu news outlet that she thought Mangione "was just such a thoughtful and deeply compassionate person at everything he did." Wexler also attended the University of Pennsylvania at the same time as Mangione, but the two didn't become friends until living in Hawaii in 2022.
Freddie Leatherbury, who also graduated from Gilman School with Mangione in 2016, told Baltimore station WBAL-TV that the news of his former classmate's arrest was "just so shocking and does not really track with what I thought he was as a person."
“There was nothing that came off weird about him,” Leatherbury said. “He had great friends. He had a lot of female friends as well. He was a relatively unassuming kid. He was down to earth. He was smart, well-adjusted socially. He was at least a two-sport athlete, from what I can remember, and he really had everything going for him."
"I can tell you that this is one of the last people you think would do something like this,” he continued. “He was one of the nicest kids, most friendly kids that I had known at Gilman."
One person, who worked with Mangione as a counselor at the Stanford University summer program in 2019, told CNN that they were "flabbergasted" by the arrest. The person, who asked to not be named, said, "I never got the impression he would self-destruct."
Maryland state lawmaker Nino Mangione, a cousin, shared a short statement from the Mangione family on X late Monday night.
“We cannot comment on news reports regarding Luigi Mangione,” it said. “We only know what we have read in the media. Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest.”
