When an Altoona, Pennsylvania police officer texted his supervisor to say he was responding to a tip that the suspect in a nationwide manhunt was sitting in a local McDonald’s, the supervisor was incredulous.
“If you get the New York City shooter I’ll buy you a hoagie,” Officer Joseph Detwiler recalled his superior saying.
Detwiler didn’t say if he ever got the free sandwich. But he did make the arrest.
He testified Tuesday at multiday hearings in New York state court. Mangione’s defense attorneys say Altoona police did not read Mangione his Miranda rights or obtain a proper warrant before they started interrogating him and searched his backpack. The attorneys are moving to suppress evidence before trial.
Mangione faces state and federal murder charges, and is accused of shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Midtown hotel last year.
Detwiler testified that when he and his partner approached Mangione in the back of the fast food restaurant and asked him to pull down his mask, “I knew it was him immediately.”
“I watch a lot of Fox News,” Detwiler told prosecutors. He’d said he’d seen photos of the murder suspect’s face shared by the NYPD “many, many times.”
On Tuesday, people in the courtroom for the first time saw body camera footage from Mangione’s arrest last December. The video shows Detwiler and his partner entering the McDonald’s and locating Mangione in the back. Christmas carols play in the background as the two begin to question him.
When they ask Mangione why he’s in Altoona, he responds that he’s homeless. He mainly avoids answering their questions, eating bites of his hashbrowns and breakfast sandwich in the pauses. Detwiler can be heard whistling along to “Jingle Bell Rock.”
The video shows Mangione giving officers an ID listing his name as Mark Rosario — an ID that would turn out to be fake. The officers tell Mangione he’s under police investigation about 15 minutes after approaching him, according to video footage, and read him his Miranda rights a few minutes later.
Officers arrested Mangione at the McDonald’s for forgery and giving a false ID.
In pre-trial motions, Mangione’s attorneys have argued that anything he said before he was read his Miranda rights — notably, that he was homeless and his name was Mark Rosario — should be barred from trial.
Defense attorneys are also seeking to strike evidence found in the backpack, including a handgun, silencer, hand-written notebook and several electronic storage devices. More Altoona police officers are expected to testify in the coming days as to why they decided to search the backpack on scene before seeking a written warrant.
Manhattan Judge Gregory Carro will ultimately decide what evidence can be included at trial. He has not yet set a trial date.