By Savannah Hulsey Pointer
Contributing Writer
Luigi Mangione, the man accused of gunning down a health care executive on a New York street, pleaded guilty to two 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 Friday, as part of a deal that would avoid a trial in connection with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Mangione, 28, said he shot Thompson, 50, as he walked toward a Manhattan hotel where UnitedHealth Group was hosting an event on Dec. 4, 2024.
U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald responded to the plea, saying that Mangione “stands convicted in federal court and faces life in prison.”
“While the defendant pleaded guilty, our office does not have a plea agreement with him. Instead, he pleaded open, which means he pleaded guilty to all pending counts in the indictment,” he said.
“There are no accommodations or concessions, and we are free to seek the maximum penalty under the law. The results achieved today now allow our office to seek the maximum penalty allowed — life imprisonment.”
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 2027.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch called the shooting a “brazen, targeted attack” at the time.
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 prepared statement.
He was remembered as being “so normal and unassuming, with no sign of eccentricities.”
Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Michael Welner said 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.
