A Manhattan judge on Friday unsealed police body camera footage of Luigi Mangione's arrest, giving the public its first look at the December 9, 2024 morning when eight Altoona, Pennsylvania officers located and detained the suspect in the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson inside a McDonald's.
The hours of footage open as officers descend on the McDonald's in central Pennsylvania, nearly 300 miles from Manhattan. They find Mangione seated at a table in a ski hat, surgical face mask and winter coat. The officers say they are responding to a call about a suspicious person and ask for his name and identification. One officer asks him to lower the mask hiding his face, and the officers then step outside to talk out of his earshot. "That's 100% him," one says eagerly. "I told you, man," another responds off camera. "You're a little nervous right now. Why are you nervous?" an officer asks at one point.
After questioning him, officers handcuff Mangione and transport him to the police station for more thorough searches. One officer searches his belongings and smiles widely as she pulls out a gun cartridge, seemingly confirming they had found their suspect. The footage also captures the moment an officer retrieves a gun — now known to be the murder weapon — from his backpack. Mangione first produced a fake ID bearing the name "Mark Rosario," the same name prosecutors say the shooting suspect used to check into a New York City hostel before Thompson's killing, before later giving his real name.
The release came after CNN petitioned for the videos to be unsealed. Some of the footage had been played during a dayslong suppression hearing last December, when Mangione's lawyers argued the evidence recovered during the arrest should be thrown out because his backpack was improperly searched. New York State Judge Gregory Carro ultimately ruled most of the evidence would be allowed at trial but kept the videos under seal. After Mangione's guilty plea in federal court in August, the judge authorized their release. ABC News had also petitioned the court. This is the first time the footage has been seen outside the courtroom, including a redacted version of Mangione's strip search at the Altoona police department.
Mangione pleaded guilty in August to two federal stalking counts in connection with Thompson's killing. Thompson, 50, a Minnesota executive, was gunned down as he walked to a midtown Manhattan hotel for his company's annual investor conference, five days before the Altoona arrest. In federal court, Mangione admitted to the crime: "I used a 3-D printer to make part of a gun, and I equipped the gun with the silencer and the magazine. I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan and he died. I knew what I was doing was illegal." His federal sentencing is set for December 18, and he faces life in prison.
Mangione also faces murder charges in New York state court, but those proceedings have been postponed indefinitely as his lawyers seek to have the case thrown out following his federal plea. The Manhattan district attorney's office faces a deadline later this month to respond to the motion to dismiss the state indictment, and the parties are due back in state court in December. The federal sentence will come first; the state case waits.