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The key was not advanced facial recognition technology. An employee at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s reported the man after seeing a widely circulated image of the suspect.
- Dec. 9, 2024Updated 6:49 p.m. ET
In the end, it was the simple act of distributing photos — not sophisticated facial recognition technology — that led the police to a man they are calling a “person of interest” in the fatal shooting of a health care executive in Midtown Manhattan last week.
After the shooting of Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, last Wednesday, the New York Police Department began releasing a steady drip of images. The photos, taken together, appeared to show a young man with light skin and dark features. One photo — crucially — showed his entire face.
Even as the police recovered what they called an “enormous amount” of forensic evidence and video, it was that specific photo that led to the arrest of a man on Monday morning about 300 miles from New York City, according to Joseph Kenny, the Police Department’s chief of detectives.
Just after 9 a.m. on Monday, in a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa., an employee spotted a man who looked like the person in the photos, and then called the police, who detained the man for questioning.
The man, whom the police identified as Luigi Mangione, 26, of Maryland, was carrying a gun, a silencer and some kind of manifesto, the police said.
Chief Kenny said that it was hard to credit the break in the case to any one moment or piece of evidence, but that if he had to, “it would be the release of that photograph to the media.”
