AP – The man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive was whisked back to New York, United States by plane and helicopter to face new federal charges of stalking and murder, which could bring the death penalty if he’s convicted.
Luigi Mangione was held without bail following a Manhattan federal court appearance, capping a whirlwind day that began in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested last week in the December 4 attack on Brian Thompson.
The 26-year-old Ivy League graduate was expected to be arraigned on Thursday on a state murder indictment in a killing that at once rattled the business community and galvanised some health insurance critics, but the federal charges preempted that appearance. The cases will now proceed on parallel tracks, prosecutors said, with the state charges expected to go to trial first.
Mangione, shackled at the ankles and wearing dress clothes, said little during the 15-minute proceeding as he sat between his lawyers in a packed federal courtroom. He nodded as a magistrate judge informed him of his rights and the charges against him, occasionally leaning forward to a microphone to tell her he understood.
After the hearing, a federal marshal handed Mangione’s lawyers a bag containing his belongings, including the orange prison jumpsuit he had worn to court in Pennsylvania.
Mangione had been held in Pennsylvania since his December 9 arrest while eating breakfast at a McDonald’s in Altoona, about 37 kilometres west of Manhattan.
At a hearing on Thursday morning, Mangione agreed to be returned to New York and was immediately turned over to at least a dozen New York Police Department officers who took him to an airport and a plane bound for Long Island.
He then was flown to a Manhattan heliport, where he was walked slowly up a pier by a throng of officers with assault rifles – a contingent that included New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch. The federal complaint filed charges Mangione with two counts of stalking and one count each of murder through use of a firearm and a firearms offence.
Murder by firearm carries the possibility of the death penalty, though federal prosecutors will determine whether to pursue that path in coming months.
In a state court indictment announced earlier this week, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office charged Mangione with murder as an act of terrorism, which carries a possible sentence of life in prison without parole. New York does not have the death penalty.
