Minutes after police approached Luigi Mangione in a Pennsylvania McDonald’s, he told an officer he didn’t want to talk, according to video and testimony at a court hearing Thursday for the man charged with killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Although some video and accounts of police interactions with Mangione emerged earlier in this week’s hearing, Thursday’s session brought new glimpses of the lead-up to his Dec. 9, 2024, arrest in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
Police had been told that a customer at the McDonald’s resembled the much-publicized suspect in Thompson’s killing, but a pair of officers initially approached Mangione with a low-key tone, saying only that someone had said he looked “suspicious.” Asked for his ID, he gave a phony New Jersey driver’s license with a fake name, according to prosecutors.
Moments later, after frisking Mangione, Officer Joseph Detwiler stepped away to communicate with dispatchers about the license, leaving rookie Officer Tyler Frye by Mangione’s table.
“So what’s going on? What brings you up here from New Jersey,” Frye asked, according to his body-camera video.
Mangione answered in a low voice. Asked what the suspect had said, Frye testified Thursday: “It was something along the lines of: He didn’t want to talk to me at that time.”
Mangione later added that “he was just trying to use the Wi-Fi,” according to Frye.