Luigi Mangione, who was arrested and charged with homicide within the taking pictures dying of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, as soon as belonged to a gaggle of Ivy League players who performed assassins, a member of the group informed NBC News.
In the sport, known as “Among Us,” some gamers are secretly assigned to be killers in area who carry out different duties whereas making an attempt to keep away from suspicion from different gamers.
Alejandro Romero, who attended the University of Pennsylvania with Mangione and was a member of the identical Discord group, stated he was shocked when information broke on social media that Mangione had been taken into police custody.
“I simply discovered it extraordinarily ironic that, you already know, we had been on this recreation and there may really be a real killer amongst us,” he stated.
“As quickly as his picture and title popped up on X, my pal texted me asking if I knew him, after which both I used to be calling some 10 pals, or they had been calling me,” Romero went on. “I did not communicate to anyone as we speak who wasn’t already conscious of what had occurred.”
Mangione, 26, was taken into police custody Monday morning in a McDonald’s restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after being noticed by an worker.
Police discovered a firearm, believed to have been 3D-printed, and a handwritten doc on Mangione “that speaks to each his motivation and mindset,” New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch stated at a information convention.
He was additionally carrying pretend identification and a passport, authorities stated.
In New York, Mangione was charged with homicide, possession of a loaded firearm, possession of a cast instrument and felony possession of a weapon, in response to courtroom paperwork.
Authorities in Pennsylvania charged Mangione with carrying firearms with no license, forgery, tampering with data or identification, possessing devices of crime and offering false identification to police.
In a assertion posted on X on Monday evening, a member of the Mangione household stated they’re “shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest.”
“We supply our prayers to the household of Brian Thompson and we ask folks to hope for all concerned,” Nino Mangione, a Republican member of the Maryland House of Delegates, wrote within the submit.
Romero, who stated he has not spoken to or seen Mangione since 2020, described him as a typical school scholar who didn’t stand out to him.
“He simply match a mould,” Romero stated. “He simply appeared like every other regular frat dude that you might see at a frat social gathering.”
His last yr in school was minimize brief when the pandemic hit. Students had been compelled off campus of their final semester and didn’t return for graduation.
The Discord group was one technique to keep related, Romero stated, however members started to go their separate methods as they bought full-time jobs or launched into lengthy journeys.
During a few of these years, Mangione left behind a digital footprint that included reviewing “Industrial Society and Its Future,” also called the “Unabomber Manifesto” by Ted Kaczynski, on Goodreads, a platform for e-book opinions and suggestions. It served because the ideological reasoning for Kaczynski’s yearslong mail bomb marketing campaign that killed three folks and injured 23 others.
Mangione turned considerably extra energetic on X in 2021 after 5 years of not posting or reposting content material, in response to a evaluate of his account on the social media platform.
When requested concerning the change in Mangione’s on-line persona, Romero stated that query is circulating amongst his pal group.
“I really feel like persons are not sure the best way to label him,” he stated. “I’m personally struggling to grasp how this all suits.”