The Ivy league tech graduate charged with murdering UnitedHealthcare chief govt Brian Thompson in Manhattan made a number of visits to Japan earlier this 12 months, in keeping with those that spoke with the alleged gunman.
During one in all his visits on Feb. 25, the suspect, Luigi Mangione, now 26, entered a restaurant in Tokyo the place he sat on the counter, in keeping with Obara Jun, a Japanese poker participant who noticed Mangione battle with ordering within the restaurant.
“He was very pleasant and it didn’t take lengthy for us to get to know one another,” Jun instructed NBC News through textual content message Wednesday.
The poker participant posted an image with Mangione to X the night time they met, however solely recognized the person he spoke with as Mangione after his face was plastered throughout social media this week because the suspect in Thompson’s homicide.
Jun stated he was consuming with a good friend on the bar after which invited the seemingly pleasant American to his desk. “He was very completely happy to take a seat at our desk,” Jun recalled, and stated he instructed Mangione he would deal with him to some meals and drinks.
Jun recalled Mangione as being on trip from Hawaii and that “he was very good, and that he graduated from a prestigious college.”
Mangione “instructed me that he loves Japan and Japanese tradition,” he stated.
“He was very pleasant, and we adopted one another on Twitter, loved a meal collectively for some time, after which we parted methods,” Jun added.
Tokyo in February.Courtesy of Obara Jun
But a month later, Mangione was describing Japan as missing free will and proposed options for fixing Japan’s demographic disaster.
He stated the answer to the nation’s falling delivery charges wasn’t immigration however “cultural.”
His options included banning intercourse toys and changing conveyer belts in sushi eating places with waiters to advertise human interplay, in keeping with an April publish on X.
“Modern Japanese city atmosphere is an evolutionary mismatch for the human animal,” he wrote.
He additionally proposed changing online game cafes with athletics at school.
Meanwhile, Mangione was additionally messaging Gurwinder Bhogal, who runs a Substack publication in regards to the social influence of know-how, which Mangione subscribed to and was a “longtime fan” of.
Mangione was a “founding member of my Substack, and somebody I’ve been pleasant with for some time,” Bhogal stated in a Substack publish this week, including, “I hope there’s been some sort of a mix-up, as a result of this doesn’t appear to be him in any respect.”
Despite his gripes with Japan, Mangione emailed Bhogal about his visits there and stated he was planning one other go to to the nation in early May, Bhogal stated.
It was not clear what number of complete visits Mangione made to Japan or the full time he spent within the nation.
“Japan is peak NPC-ville,” Mangione stated on April 16 in an electronic mail to Bhogal shared on X, utilizing a time period that refers to preprogrammed non-player online game characters and which is at occasions used as a derogatory slang.
“Scary lack of free will on this nation,” Mangione wrote within the electronic mail, as he described an incident the place police in Japan didn’t jaywalk to assist an individual “seizing on the bottom.”
Mangione had an “eclectic vary of issues,” Bhogal stated on X.
“The foremost impression I received of Luigi once I spoke with him was that he was a deeply curious particular person,” Bhogal stated.