Luigi Mangione: Alleged New York gunman tussles with police outside court
The alleged killer of a US health insurance boss has tussled with police officers as they were escorting him to court.
Luigi Mangione, in handcuffs, shouted to reporters outside the Pennsylvania courthouse: “It’s completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people and their lived experience.”
He has been charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson, who was shot dead in Manhattan last week.
Dressed in an orange prison uniform, Mangione was seen struggling with officers, who pushed him against a wall.
Luigi Mangione tussled with police before entering court. Pic: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/AP
During an appearance at Blair County Courthouse, he decided to challenge his extradition to New York, triggering a legal process which could last weeks. He has also been denied bail.
Mangione mostly stared straight ahead at the hearing, occasionally consulting papers, rocking in his chair or looking back at the gallery.
Pic: Pennsylvania Dept of Corrections
Mangione was arrested on Monday after a McDonald’s worker in Pennsylvania alerted authorities to a customer, who was found with a gun, mask and writings, which police say links him to the ambush.
Sky News’ partner network NBC News has spoken to a customer who spotted Mangione in the restaurant in Altoona, around 230 miles (370km) west of New York.
The man, who only gave his name as Larry, said his friend told him “that looks like the shooter from New York”, adding that a backpack looked similar to one the suspect was carrying.
Larry added: “I thought it was one of the employees, because they go back here on break, and they put their hoods up, and he was in the corner with his hood up.”
CCTV showed Luigi Mangione eating at a McDonald’s before his arrest. Pic: Pennsylvania State Police
Read more from Sky News:
Rookie cop arrested Luigi Mangione
Luigi Mangione: What we know
Mangione had been charged earlier in Altoona with weapons, forgery and other offences.
During that court appearance, legal documents revealed Mangione began shaking when police challenged him at the McDonald’s about whether he had been in New York recently.
Pennsylvania prosecutor Peter Weeks said Mangione, who gave officers a fake ID, was found with a passport and $10,000 (£7,840) in cash – $2,000 of it in foreign currency.
Luigi Mangione shortly after being arrested in Altoona on Monday. Pic: Pennsylvania State Police
He was also carrying a gun, similar to the one used to kill Mr Thompson, 50, last Wednesday as he walked alone to a hotel for an annual investor conference.
Investigators are still trying to establish whether he made the firearm himself or whether he received it from someone, according to NBC News.
It is reporting that two senior law enforcement officials have confirmed the gun and suppressor were both handmade.
Mangione had three pages of writings on him at the time he was taken into custody, officials also told NBC News.
Luigi Mangione was given a ticket for a minor driving offence in Hawaii in November 2023. Pic: Hawaii Dept of Land and Natural Resources
Those writings say, in part, “frankly these parasites had it coming” and “I wasn’t working with anyone” during broader criticism of the US healthcare industry and large corporations, including UnitedHealthcare.
The Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources released a photo of Mangione receiving a penalty notice in November 2023 for a minor traffic offence in Honolulu – his last known address.
US
Trump denies claim he wrote birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein – and says he has ordered release of more case files
Donald Trump has called an alleged letter he wrote to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein “fake” and said he will sue the “ass off” Rupert Murdoch, who owns the paper that first published the claim.
In multiple posts on Truth Social, the US president accused The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) of fabricating the letter that it claimed was written by Mr Trump as part of a collection of letters addressed to Epstein that his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell planned to give him as a birthday present in 2003.
According to documents seen by the WSJ, Mr Trump’s letter featured several lines of typewritten text framed by what appeared to be a hand-drawn outline of a naked woman.
The paper said the letter concludes “Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret”, and featured the signature “Donald”, allegedly drawn across the woman’s waist, meant to mimic the appearance of pubic hair.
Epstein took his own life in prison in 2019. Pic: AP
Responding to the WSJ’s claims, Mr Trump wrote: “The Wall Street Journal printed a FAKE letter, supposedly to Epstein. These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don’t draw pictures.
“I told Rupert Murdoch it was a Scam, that he shouldn’t print this Fake Story. But he did, and now I’m going to sue his ass off, and that of his third rate newspaper. Thank you for your attention to this matter! DJT.”
He said earlier he would also sue the WSJ and News Corp, which Mr Murdoch owns. The WSJ is published by News Corp subsidiary company, Dow Jones & Co.
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From 16 July: Trump: Epstein case is ‘a boring story’
The Justice Department has not responded to the WSJ and the FBI declined to comment.
In a separate post, Mr Trump said he has asked the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to release “any and all pertinent grand jury testimony” in the case of the paedophile financier who was found dead in his Manhattan cell in August 2019, shortly after he was arrested on sex trafficking charges.
The release of any documents, Mr Trump said, would be subject to approval by a court.
The justice department has previously said it had around 200 documents relating to Epstein and that the FBI had thousands more. It is unknown how much of this is grand jury testimony – which is typically kept secret under US law.
Ms Bondi responded to the president on X, writing: “President Trump-we are ready to move the court tomorrow to unseal the grand jury transcripts.”
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Elon Musk, who claimed last month that Mr Trump appears in the Epstein files, was surprisingly among the first to come to the president’s defence over the WSJ claims.
“It really doesn’t sound like something Trump would say tbh,” the tech billionaire wrote on X, before going on to ask where the evidence against Epstein allegedly held by the FBI had gone.
The Trump administration has come under criticism after the president appeared to U-turn on his own promise to release more information about the Epstein case publicly.
In the run-up to the US election last year, Mr Trump drew on rumours and conspiracy theories that appeared to accuse the Biden administration of suppressing the extent of Epstein’s paedophilia, predatory behaviour and his so-called “client list” – thought to contain names of the rich and famous who conspired with him in a child sex trafficking operation.
Ms Bondi fuelled these rumours in February by telling Fox News that the alleged Epstein client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review”.
Read more:
Ghislaine Maxwell could challenge imprisonment
Why is Trump fighting with MAGA over Epstein?
The huge impact of Musk’s row with Trump
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In the same month, the justice department released some government documents regarding the case, but there were no new revelations.
After a months-long review of additional evidence, the department earlier this month released a video meant to prove that Epstein killed himself, but said no other files related to the case would be made public.
The decision was criticised by many in Mr Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, who Mr Trump later called “weaklings”.
Sky News has contacted the White House for further comment.
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