McDonald’s customer joked with friends that Luigi Mangione looked like UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting suspect — then found out it was him
A McDonald’s customer thought his pal was joking when he pointed out alleged healthcare CEO killer Luigi Mangione at the fast-food joint — adding that a worker actually recognized the suspect’s “eyebrows.”
“One of my friends — and I thought he was kidding — when the shooter … who they made the arrest on came in, he made a comment, ‘Well, that looks like the shooter from New York,’ ” said the Altoona, Pa., customer, only ID’d as Larry, to Fox News on Tuesday.
“But the group of us thought it was more of a joke, and we were kidding about it,” Larry said.
“But then as it turned out, it was him.’’
The customer added to the BBC, “I said to [the friend] Mike this morning, ‘When you said that, were you serious?’
“He said, ‘Yeah, I was serious,’ ” Larry said.
The patron said a Mickey D counter worker told him Monday she also was suspicious of the man because he had the same dark piercing eyes and thick eyebrows as the suspected murderer in surveillance photos distributed by authorities.
She noticed his “eyes and his eyebrows” while taking his order, Larry told the UK outlet.
“It was like she got in her mind, ‘Oh my God, it’s a guy from New York,’” Larry said.
Mangione, 26, of Towson, Md., is accused of executing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in a sidewalk shooting in Manhattan last week over a grudge with the industry.
He had been on the lam for five days — with the NYPD scouring places such as the Central Park Boathouse pond for any threads of evidence related to the murder — when a customer spotted Mangione in the McDonald’s and called local cops.
The suspect had been wearing a face mask at the eatery but lowered it at times, including to munch on hash browns.
What we know about the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson
- Brian Thompson, the CEO of insurance giant UnitedHealthcare, was gunned down Wednesday outside a luxury Midtown hotel in a “brazen, targeted attack,” police said.
- Thompson was named CEO of UnitedHealth in April 2021. He joined the company in 2004. He was one of several senior executives at the company under investigation by the Department of Justice.
- Thompson’s wife, Paulette, said her husband had been getting threats before he was killed.
- Thompson’s shooting led to sick support online, and even spurred a tasteless lookalike competition in NYC.
- A person of interest has been nabbed by police officers inside a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa.
- The suspect has been identified as Luigi Mangione, 26, originally from Towson, Md. He’s an Ivy League graduate who hated the medical community.
Follow along with The Post’s live updates on the news surrounding Brian Thompson’s murder.
Mangione at first tried to lie his way out of a confrontation with the arriving officers, who weren’t buying it and held him — eventually finding a ghost gun with a silencer and bullets in his backpack.
Larry told Fox that his friend thought he recognized Mangione’s jacket and backpack from photos previously released of the suspect by the NYPD.
While Larry said he didn’t get a particularly good look at the man, he recalled him ordering his food and sitting in the back of the restaurant.
“I passed him whenever I left, I left and went to church, [then] came back because I heard there was an arrest,” Larry said.
He said Mangione may have been close enough to hear them joking about him resembling the shooter, but “There was no reaction from him whenever my friend said that.”
— Additional reporting by Kate Sheehy
