NEW YORK — Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, appeared in court Tuesday for the second day of a hearing to determine what evidence may be presented to jurors at his murder trial.
Mangione walked into court wearing a dark suit and light shirt before a court officer unshackled his wrists so that he could take notes on a legal pad.
New York state prosecutors continued calling witnesses who could speak to Mangione’s arrest, which came five days after Thompson was shot dead on a midtown Manhattan sidewalk at dawn in December 2024. The 50-year-old CEO had been in town for the company’s annual convention.
On Monday, the court was shown surveillance video from the Altoona, Pennsylvania, McDonald’s where Mangione was arrested while using his laptop. In a 911 call, also played in court, an employee of the McDonald’s was heard explaining to the operator that an older female customer thought Mangione resembled photographs of the New York shooting suspect, even though only his eyes and bushy eyebrows were visible outside of the medical mask and hat he was wearing. The operator told the employee to keep an eye on Mangione until police could arrive.
At issue in this week’s hearing is how the Altoona Police Department handled Mangione’s arrest.
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His defense team aims to convince Judge Gregory Carro to bar certain key pieces of evidence from being shown to jurors at trial, including a firearm, a red notebook with writings that allegedly reference Thompson’s killing. They argue the items were taken before the officers had obtained a warrant. The defense team also wants to bar certain statements Mangione gave to officers before they read him his Miranda rights.
In court Tuesday, prosecutors began by calling as a witness Altoona police officer Joseph Detwiler, who responded to the 911 call from McDonald’s without his sirens because he did not believe the person eating there was going to turn out to be the shooter from New York.
Once he asked the man at the McDonald’s to pull down his mask, however, Detwiler said, “I knew it was him immediately.” Detwiler, who watches “a lot of Fox News,” had been following the story on TV.
He made a phone call to tell a supervisor he believed he’d found the CEO killer.
Video of the interaction with Mangione taken from the officers’ body cameras played in court, with the jingly Christmas music coming from the sound system at the McDonald’s providing a surreal backdrop.
Mangione gave his name as Mark Rosario and provided a New Jersey identification card, which the officers checked against a national system.
They frisked him and asked why he seemed nervous.
“I saw his fingers shaking a little bit,” Detwiler told the court.
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The officer and his partner pretended they had to wait for the results of an ID check while backup arrived. Mangione is seen in the video remaining mostly silent, sitting with his arms crossed and his back to the wall, saying only that he was “homeless” at the time. He ate his hash browns and a breakfast sandwich during the wait.
As more officers arrived, one of them advised Detwiler to tell Mangione that they thought he had given a false name, and that if he did so again, he could be arrested.
It was at that point that Mangione gave up his real identity. He spelled out his name — Luigi Nicholas Mangione — for one of the officers.
Around 20 minutes passed between the time the Altoona officers arrived at the McDonald’s and the moment one of them read Mangione his Miranda rights. Officers placed him in handcuffs and rooted through the pockets of the multiple jackets he had on, finding a jar of peanut butter and a bright blue-and-white wallet stuffed with American and foreign currency.
He was taken into custody minutes later, initially on forgery charges. Altoona officers were already in contact with the New York Police Department.
Sitting with his lawyers in court, the powerhouse husband-and-wife team Karen and Marc Agnifilo, Mangione leaned forward to take notes at several points. He appeared to pay close attention to surveillance video from New York that showed Thompson’s shooting.
Questioning Detwiler, Karen Agnifilo sought to confirm that he was trying to get information out of Mangione about whether he had recently visited New York in order to help law enforcement there. The officer shied away from the characterization, saying he was merely trying to “see his reaction.”
Detwiler confirmed that he lied to Mangione about the reason police wanted to question him: for a supposedly routine ID check. He had suggested that someone complained Mangione was loitering, even though Mangione provided a receipt showing he had only been at the restaurant for around 40 minutes. Detwiler told several lies, he said, in order to keep the suspect “calm.”
Agnifilo also zeroed in on Detwiler’s interest in the New York shooting case, asking him if he was proud of himself for having brought the suspect in.
“To me, this is another arrest,” the officer claimed.
The 27-year-old Ivy League-educated alleged shooter is fighting three cases in three jurisdictions. Aside from the New York state murder charges, he is charged with murder at the federal level and with gun-related charges at the state level in Pennsylvania. The federal case may carry the possibility of the death penalty but will likely go to trial after the state case.
The Agnifilos have already seen a victory in convincing Carro in September to toss two state-level terrorism charges that were lodged against their client.
