Body camera footage played in multi-day hearing reveals new details about Luigi Mangione’s McDonald’s arrest

New York
 — 

When the suspect in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare Chief Executive Brian Thompson was arrested last year after a high-profile five-day manhunt, many people had a question: What was Luigi Mangione doing at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania?

One of the first officers on the scene was doubtful he would actually find the suspect inside the restaurant, he testified Tuesday, after responding to a 911 call from the McDonald’s manager.

“I did not think it was going to be the person that they thought it was,” Altoona Police Officer Joseph Detwiler said, opening the second day of a hearing Mangione’s attorneys requested over whether some key evidence should be barred from his New York murder case.

Detwiler told prosecutors in court that his boss jokingly promised to buy him a hoagie if he actually caught the shooting suspect. The lighthearted mood ended as soon as he saw the man sitting alone at a table near the restrooms.

Detwiler and another officer approached Mangione, asking him to pull down the face mask he was wearing.

“I knew it was him immediately,” Detwiler testified.

About 20 minutes after they began speaking to him – according to the defense team’s timeline – and determining that Mangione had given them a false name, the suspect, whose image had been plastered across the world, was read his Miranda rights, having just finished his breakfast.

Mangione listened to Detwiler’s testimony in court Tuesday, wearing a dark sports coat and with his hands unshackled. In addition to asking for his first statements to police to be suppressed, Mangione’s attorneys want the writings and gun police found in his backpack excluded from trial, saying they were found before officers obtained a search warrant.

During the first day of the hearing on Monday, Judge Gregory Carro heard a 911 call the McDonald’s employee made, telling the dispatcher some customers were concerned the alleged killer of Thompson, who was fatally shot in Midtown Manhattan, was in the restaurant.

Two corrections officers who work at SCI Huntingdon, the state prison where Mangione was held until he was extradited to New York to face charges, testified about alleged statements Mangione made to them, including his disclosure that he had a 3D gun in his backpack.

Five witnesses testified on Monday. Prosecutors indicated they could call more than two dozen witnesses in total. The hearing is expected to last several days.

Before Monday, little was known about the 911 call that ultimately led to Mangione’s capture and ended a five-day nationwide manhunt after the brazen shooting.

A manager at McDonald’s placed the call at 9:14 am on December 9, 2024. Her voice was calm as she told the 911 operator that she tried to call a nonemergency number but couldn’t get through.

“I have a customer here that some other customers were suspicious of and he looks like the CEO shooter from New York,” the manager said. “So they’re really upset and they’ve come to me.”

The manager told the dispatcher the man was sitting in the fast-food restaurant’s lobby near the bathrooms with a pharmacy bag in front of him. She said he was wearing a black jacket, a medical mask and a tan beanie, and noted that “the only thing you can see is his eyebrows.” She described him as mid-height and mid-weight. The dispatcher told the manager an officer was on the way.

Two corrections officers from SCI Huntingdon described observing Mangione, whose every movements were notated on constant watch.

Officer Matthew Henry said he was “agitated” by having to appear in the courtroom and answered questions quickly and directly.

He said on December 10, 2024, Mangione told him he had a backpack with a 3D printed gun and foreign currency. Mangione also mentioned having a magazine of ammunition, Henry testified. Henry said he didn’t engage in any conversation with Mangione. He also said he never told anyone about the statements until questioned by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office in January and never memorialized the statements at the time.

Mangione’s attorney Marc Agnifilo incredulously asked Henry if his client just “blurted” out that he had a gun, suggesting Henry made it up after learning about a 3D gun being recovered from news reports.

He asked Henry repeatedly if he wrote it down at the time. Henry said he didn’t.

“Did words leave your mouth in his direction about any subject at all?” Agnifilo asked.

Henry said the only time he responded to Mangione was when he was asked questions about the prison.

“I helped clarify,” Henry said.

Another corrections officer, Tomas Rivers, testified he was assigned to monitor Mangione beginning on December 16, 2024.

“I was told that SCI Huntingdon did not want an Epstein-style situation,” he told the court Monday.

During the 16 hours Rivers monitored Mangione, the inmate was “often” at the door of his cell to speak with him, the corrections officer said.

The two discussed the differences in private and nationalized health care, as well as “different medical states in third-world countries compared to the West,” Rivers said.

Rivers testified they also talked about the coverage of the case. The corrections officer said he told Mangione that mainstream, traditional outlets were focused on the crime.

On social media, Rivers said, the discussion was more about potential wrongdoings in the health care industry.

Rivers said he never told anyone that he spoke with Mangione except when he was questioned by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office earlier this year. The corrections officer said he wasn’t investigating the case when he spoke with the inmate. “I had no interest in it,” he testified.

During cross-examination by defense attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Rivers confirmed his discussions with Mangione were two-way conversations, but he repeatedly testified that he didn’t recall what he said. The defense attorney remarked that Rivers only seemed to remember what her client said in the conversations.

Mangione’s lawyers are trying to have all statements he made to law enforcement from his arrest on December 9 until he was transported to New York on December 19, 2024, thrown out of the case.

Prosecutors used the first two witnesses they called on Monday — an NYPD officer and the person who had installed security cameras at the McDonald’s — to admit video and photographic evidence that traced the investigation from the murder scene to the arrest of Mangione in a McDonald’s.

The prosecutor showed video of Thompson being gunned down on a Manhattan sidewalk, and images of the suspect taken from video cameras inside a Starbucks, a hostel and the back of a taxi, which were distributed to the national media.

The judge was also shown surveillance video from inside the McDonald’s where Mangione was seen walking in, ordering food and walking to the back of the restaurant before sitting down at a corner table. Roughly 25 minutes later, two Altoona police officers walk in and approach Mangione. By the time Mangione was arrested just before 10 am, at least eight police officers arrived on the scene. There was no audio in the videos.