Suspect charged with killing UnitedHealthcare's CEO as an act of terrorism
The man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare’s CEO is charged with murder as an act of terrorism
NEW YORK — The man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare's CEO has been charged with murder as an act of terrorism, prosecutors said Tuesday as they worked to bring him to a New York court from a Pennsylvania jail.
Luigi Mangione already was charged with murder in the Dec. 4 killing of Brian Thompson, but the terror allegation is new.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Thompson's death on a midtown Manhattan street “was a killing that was intended to evoke terror. And we’ve seen that reaction."
Mangione’s New York lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, declined to comment.
Thompson, 50, was shot while walking to a hotel where Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare — the United States' biggest medical insurer — was holding an investor conference.
The killing kindled a fiery outpouring of resentment toward U.S. health insurance companies, as Americans swapped stories online and elsewhere of being denied coverage, left in limbo as doctors and insurers disagreed, and stuck with sizeable bills.
The shooting also rattled C-suites, as “wanted” posters with other health care executives’ names and faces appeared on New York streets and some social media users extolled Mangione's deed as payback.
New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Tuesday that «any attempt to rationalize this is vile, reckless and offensive to our deeply held principles of justice.”
A New York law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks allows prosecutors to charge crimes as acts of terrorism when they're “intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policies of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion and affect the conduct of
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