(Bloomberg) -- Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the fatal midtown Manhattan shooting of a top UnitedHealth Group Inc. executive, is on his way to New York to face murder charges after he agreed in a Pennsylvania courtroom Thursday to drop his opposition to the move.
New York Police Deparment officers whisked Mangione away from the courthouse in Blair County, Pennsylvania, after a judge ordered his extradition to face first-degree murder over the shooting of Brian Thompson. Mangione, 26, rode in a caravan of police vehicles and is being flown to New York for his arraignment in lower Manhattan as early as Thursday afternoon.
Mangione appeared in court wearing an orange jumpsuit, handcuffs and leg shackles, as a dozen NYPD officers sat in the front row of a packed courtroom. “We now believe it is in my client’s best interest” to go, Mangione attorney Thomas Dickey told the court.
Thompson was about to enter an investors meeting on Dec. 4 when Mangione shot him from behind with a 9-millimeter, 3D-printed ghost gun, police say. On Tuesday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced first-degree murder charges that could send Mangione to prison without the possibility of parole.
Bragg indicated that US prosecutors are preparing to announce federal charges, although their nature wasn’t immediately clear.
The defendant “brazenly shot Mr. Thompson point blank on a Manhattan sidewalk,” Bragg said in a statement. “The state case will proceed in parallel with any federal case.”
Mangione’s New York lawyer, former Manhattan prosecutor Karen Friedman Agnifilo, said “we are ready to fight these charges in whatever court they are brought.” Any federal case, she said, would be piled “on top of an already overcharged first-degree murder” case by Bragg’s office.
Mangione has emerged as a sort of antihero to some Americans who are angered by health insurers. Shell casings and a bullet found at the scene had the words “Deny,” “Depose,” and “Delay,” prosecutors said. When police arrested him in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Mangione was carrying a manifesto decrying the health-care industry and a notebook discussing the targeted killing of a CEO, authorities said.
At a news conference Tuesday, New York Police Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch denounced the “shocking and appalling celebration of cold-blooded murder.”
The shooting was captured on a security camera, as were the killer’s later movements when he fled the scene, police say. A five-day manhunt ended with Mangione’s arrest at a McDonald’s, where a patron and a worker recognized his photo from wanted posters, police say.
New York City prosecutors elevated the case to first-degree murder, a charge reserved for “the most abhorrent conduct,” like killing a police officer or terrorism, Bragg said. Mangione also faces two counts of second-degree murder, multiple weapon charges, and one count of possessing a forged driver’s license.
Mangione was clean-shaven when he was escorted into court Thursday for a pair of hearings. His first hearing lasted only seven minutes because he elected to forgo a preliminary hearing on state charges of illegally possessing a weapon and fake identification found at his arrest in Altoona.
The district attorney and Mangione’s lawyer then went back to the judge’s chambers, leaving him alone at the defense table for 43 minutes. During that period, he leafed through a report prepared by the Altoona police. At various times, he arched his eyebrows, whispered with a sheriff’s officer and grinned widely.
When the lawyers came out, Judge David Consiglio held a brief extradition hearing and then Mangione was on his way to New York.
(Updates with details of the court hearings starting in third paragraph.)
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