A former classmate of Luigi Mangione said he “almost had a heart attack” after finding out the 26-year-old was arrested Monday on suspicion of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
“He would be the last one I would think would do something like this,” Freddie Leatherbury, who attended the Gilman School—an all-boys private institution in Baltimore—with Mangione told The Baltimore Sun shortly after his arrest. “He was a nice kid.”
Police in Altoona, Pennsylvania took Mangione into custody Monday after a McDonald’s employee recognized him and called local police.
“Responding officers questioned the suspect, who was acting suspiciously and carrying multiple fraudulent IDs as well as a U.S. passport,” New York City Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch told reporters. “Upon further investigation, officers recovered a firearm on his person, as well as a suppressor, both consistent with the weapon used in the murder.”
Mangione’s backstory swiftly came to light after his arrest, including the fact that he was named the 2016 valedictorian at his $37,0000-a-year high school.
Leatherbury said that Mangione joined the private school in the sixth grade.
“He was a brainy kid,” Leatherbury added. “He was a big math guy,” and reportedly belonged to several academic clubs along with the school’s soccer team.
A teacher from the school echoed the characterization to the Washington Post, saying that Mangione was a “good spirit.”
“He was very bright, vivacious and full of life,” the teacher, who spoke with the newspaper on the condition of anonymity, said. “I’m gut-punched because it just doesn’t fit the boy that I knew those years ago.”
Mangione also claims on his X account to hold a bachelor’s degree and a master’s of science in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school.
His exact motive for allegedly gunning down a healthcare CEO in cold blood, however, remains unclear.
A number of people who appear to be Mangione’s loved ones had been trying to reach out to him for weeks on X, formerly Twitter, implying that he disappeared or otherwise cut of contact with a number of those close to him.
“@PepMangione Hey, are you ok? Nobody has heard from you in months, and apparently your family is looking for you,” wrote user @TheRealMandusa on Oct. 30 on X.
“Thinking of you and prayers everyday in your name,” wrote another X user @Collin30923201P on Nov. 25. “Know you are missed and loved.”
Mangione’s digital footprint also points to his consumption of the work of radicals. On book review website Goodreads, the Ivy League alum reviewed infamous “Unabomber” Theodore Kaczynski’s book, Industrial Society and Its Future, where he rated it as four out of a five stars.
“Reads like a series of lemmas on the question of 21st century quality of life,” Mangione wrote. “It’s easy to quickly and thoughtless write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies. But it’s simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out.”
He added, “When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive.
“You may not like his methods, but to see things from his perspective, it’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution.”
Police reportedly found a handwritten “manifesto” during Mangione’s arrest that detailed his disdain toward healthcare corporations.
“I do apologize for any strife or trauma but it had to be done,” the written notes said, according to CNN. “These parasites had it coming. I acted alone. I’m self-funded.”
