A police department 3,000 miles away from where the UnitedHealthcare CEO was brazenly gunned down is calling into question the NYPD's contention that suspected assassin Luigi Mangione was not on anyone's radar.
Mangione, 26, is charged with murdering Brian Thompson in New York City. The killing on Dec. 4 sparked a massive manhunt that lasted five days, ending Monday when police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, got a tip from a McDonald's employee who recognized the 26-year-old Ivy League graduate.
Officials have said that when Mangione was taken into custody, his name was not on law enforcement’s radar.
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“This was not a name that was called into us,” New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch told NBC on Tuesday.
Not so, according to two anonymous sources, who told the San Francisco Chronicle that an officer in the San Francisco Police Department's Special Victims Unit recognized Mangione as the suspect in surveillance photos days earlier — on Dec. 5.
That officer became familiar with Mangione’s face because he was reported missing to police in that city last month, and the Special Victims Unit was assigned to the case, according to the Chronicle.
It wasn't immediately clear if that information made it to the NYPD or FBI, according to the report.
