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Luigi Mangione he had apparently disappeared after back surgery a few months before Brian Thompson was killed in Manhattanaccording to his friend.
A 26-year-old man was arrested at McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvaniaand accused of murder on Monday regarding UnitedHealth CEO killed in Manhattan on December 4.
One of the suspect’s former co-workers, Aaron Cranston, said Mangione had not been in contact with relatives since he reportedly underwent back surgery several months ago, according to The New York Times.
The family was said to have contacted the suspect’s friends as they tried to track him down, the former Gilman School student in Baltimore said.
On Nov. 18, weeks before Thompson’s death, his mother reportedly reported Mangione missing on Nov. 18, possibly in San Francisco, law enforcement sources said New York Post.
He was born and raised in Maryland and has ties to San Francisco and a last known address in Honolulu, police said.
Mangione was arrested after he was spotted by a patron at McDonald’s who alerted the Altoona Police Department after recognizing him in images of the suspect’s face released by the NYPD last week.
He allegedly possessed a ghost gun, a silencer, “multiple fake IDs” and a handwritten manifesto allegedly bashing the health care system, authorities said.
Although the motive remains unclear, new details have emerged about his potential health problems.
The Graduated from an Ivy League college he has reportedly been living with debilitating back pain that he is said to have had surgery on last year, another friend said.
His back pain was a chronic and ongoing problem for the defendant, RJ Martin, a friend of Mangione’s and a spokesman for Surfbreak, a shared apartment in Honolulu, where Mangione lived for about six months until the spring of 2022, he said. The Times.
Martin told the newspaper that Mangione moved to Hawaii in hopes of getting as healthy as possible before major back surgery.
The injury has kept Mangione from surfing and hampered his romantic life, the spokesman said.
“His spine was kind of misaligned,” Martin said. “He said his lower vertebrae were almost half an inch, and I think he pinched a nerve. Sometimes he would do well and other times not.”
Martin said Mangione ended up having back surgery in 2023.
Mangione sent him a photo of his X-ray, which “looked disgusting, with just huge screws going into his spine,” Martin told CNN.
A photo on Mangione’s X-book shows an X-ray of a spine with four needles in it. It is unclear whether the X-ray was of the suspect’s own spine.
The murder suspect is said to have left a handwritten note about his exercise routine, stating that he suffers from spondylolisthesis, CNN reports.
The condition is when a vertebra, one of the bones in your spine, slips or moves forward onto the vertebra below.
It often occurs in the lower back, and those with a high degree of slippage are more likely to experience “significant pain” and “nerve injury” and need surgery to relieve symptoms, according to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons.
Mangione’s Goodreads account shows five books that include chronic back pain on his reading list.
They include Crooked: Outwit the back pain industry and get on the road to recoveryand Why we get sick: The hidden epidemic at the root of the most chronic disease and how to fight it.
Months before Mangione’s arrest, the suspect was sent messages on X with friends who appeared to be trying to contact him.
“No one has heard from you in months,” one person tweeted in October.
“I don’t know if you’re okay or if you’re just in a super isolated place with no service. But I haven’t heard from you in months,” another read from July.