Luigi Mangione, the man accused of gunning down a healthcare executive on a New York street, pleaded guilty to federal stalking charges, admitting to trailing the executive and shooting him on a Manhattan street in 2024.
Mangione appeared before U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett in Manhattan federal court on Aug. 14, as part of a deal that would avoid a trial in connection with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Mangione, 28, allegedly shot Thompson, 50, as he walked toward a Manhattan hotel where UnitedHealth Group was hosting an event on Dec. 4, 2024.
Mangione’s plea could allow him to seek a dismissal of the state murder charges due to admission of the lesser charge and request a delay of the upcoming trial. The trial is currently slated to start in September.
The defendant previously pleaded not guilty to state and federal charges in April of this year.
If he is convicted in either case, he faces life in prison.
In the state case, he faces murder, weapons, and forgery charges. In the federal case, he faces two counts of stalking, after murder and weapons charges were thrown out.
Former Attorney General Pamela Bondi ordered federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in the federal case.
However, Judge Gregory Carro ruled in January that prosecutors couldn’t seek the death penalty, and also threw out a firearms charge in the case.
In April, the state trial was rescheduled from early June to early September, and the federal case was pushed off until January of 2027.
Mangione, who is from Maryland, was arrested in Pennsylvania at a McDonald’s five days after the shooting.
Thompson, a married father of two who grew up on a farm in Iowa, worked his way up the corporate ladder at UnitedHealthcare, reaching the position of CEO three years before his death.
UnitedHealthcare says neither Mangione nor his parents had been clients.
A former classmate of Mangione’s, Freddie Leatherbury, thinks it’s possible that the man they remember as a robotics wiz could have been sucked into an ideology that radicalized him, according to a statement he gave to The Epoch Times.
He was remembered as being “so normal and unassuming, with no sign of eccentricities.”
Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Michael Welner told The Epoch Times shortly after the shooting that the slaying of Thompson fits the definition of “a spectacle crime”—an attention-getting act intended to shock people and make a symbolic statement.
