Luigi Mangione, the suspect arrested in connection to the shooting slay of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson is a Maryland native who graduated at the top of his high school class and earned a Master of Science in engineering with a major in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania.
Included in an online list of books 26-year-old Mangione read this year is Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski’s “Industrial Society and its Future,” which Mangione rated four out of five stars.
“It’s easy to quickly and thoughtlessly write this off as a manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies,” read part of a review of the book on Mangione’s page.
Suspect in UnitedHealthcare CEO killing is charged with murder in New York, court records show
“He was a violent individual — rightfully imprisoned — who maimed innocent people. While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy luddite, however, they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary,” the review continued.
“When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive,” the post went on to say. “It’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution.”
Mangione graduated as valedictorian of the private all-boys Gilman School in 2016, according to the Baltimore school’s website.
A Gilman classmate, Freddie Leatherbury, told the Baltimore Sun he “almost had a heart attack” from the shock of seeing Mangione was suspected in the shooting.
“He would be the last one I would think would do something like this,” Leatherbury said to the newspaper. “He was a nice kid. He was the valedictorian.”
Leatherbury said Mangione had joined the private prep school in sixth grade.
“He was a brainy kid,” he said. “He was a big math guy” and belonged to a number of academic clubs.
In a profile of area high school valedictorians written in the Baltimore Fishbowl in 2016, Mangione said his instructors emphasized learning outside of school and “an excitement to explore academic topics outside of the classroom”.
“The teachers at Gilman influenced me especially,” Mangione said before he graduated.
In a recap of the Gilman graduation ceremony posted on the school’s site, Mangione is quoted as commending his classmates for their “inventive, pioneering mentality that accompanies a strong commitment to Gilman tradition.”
The McDonald’s restaurant in Altoona, Pa. where the suspect was arrested. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
During high school, Mangione learned how to code and when he got to the University of Pennsylvania he co-founded a group to develop video games, according to Penn Today, a publication of the college.
University of Pennsylvania Game Research and Development Environment (UPGRADE), then in its second year, was profiled in Penn Today in 2018, and quoted Mangione as saying he was a computer science major.
Before starting his freshman year of college, he posted in the class of 2020’s Facebook group asking if classmates wanted to start UPGRADE, he told the publication.
“I just really wanted to make games,” said Mangione.
NYPD officers arrive at Altoona Police Department, where a man with a gun thought to be similar to the one used in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has been taken into police custody for questioning on Monday. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
According to a Facebook account, Mangione was a UI Programming intern at Maryland-based Firaxis Games in 2016 and 2017, which makes the popular XCOM strategy game series.
Take2 Games, which owns Firaxis, declined to speak to the Daily News about Mangione on Monday.
“As a practice, we do not comment on former employees,” said spokesman Alan Lewis.
According to a LinkedIn profile, after his internship Mangione was a teaching assistant at University of Pennsylvania in Data Structures and Algorithms, and also worked as a teaching assistant at Stanford University for a summer program in AI.
Since graduation, Mangione was working as a data engineer for TrueCar, a California-based online car marketplace, according to the LinkedIn profile.
“We can confirm that Luigi Mangione has not been an employee of our company since 2023,” a spokesman from TrueCar told the News Monday.
In January Mangione pleaded no contest to trespassing at Nu’uanu Pali Lookout, a public park in Kaneohe, Hawaii, and paid a $100 fine.
A cousin of Mangione’s, Nino Mangione, is a GOP lawmaker who represents a suburban Baltimore district in the state’s House of Delegates, the lawmaker’s office confirmed Monday.
In January, Mangione shared a post on X that asked for reactions to a quote from philosopher J. Krishnamurti: “It is no measure of good health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
