HOLLIDAYSBURG, Pa. (AP) — The suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO will return to New York to face murder charges after agreeing to be extradited Thursday during a court appearance in Pennsylvania where he was arrested last week after five days on the run.
Luigi Mangione waived a preliminary hearing on the Pennsylvania charges in exchange for the prosecutor giving him a 20-page investigative report from the Altoona Police Department.
Mangione also agreed to be extradited to New York.
Blair County Judge David Consiglio ordered that Mangione be turned over to the New York Police Department. At least a dozen uniformed NYPD officers were in the courtroom.
Mangione has been charged in New York with murder as an act of terrorism and could face life in prison without parole if convicted. He could appear in New York state court for arraignment on Thursday afternoon or Friday.
The 26-year-old Ivy League graduate is accused of ambushing and shooting Brian Thompson on Dec. 4 outside a Manhattan hotel where the head of the United States’ largest health insurer was walking to an investor conference.
The district attorney in Blair County, Pennsylvania, Pete Weeks, has said he was willing to put the Pennsylvania charges on hold while New York authorities prosecute Mangione for the Dec. 4 killing of UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson. Mangione faces charges of murder as an act of terrorism in New York.
Mangione is accused of giving police a fake New Jersey identification and having a gun and silencer in his bag.
“Those are decisions that rest exclusively with Mr. Mangione and the rights afforded to him,” Weeks wrote in a news release sent out Tuesday.
In a court filing last week, Mangione’s defense attorney Tom Dickey argued prosecutors hadn’t shown there’s sufficient evidence to hold Mangione, that he was in New York when Thompson was killed or that he is a fugitive from justice.
Mangione, 26, of Towson, Maryland, was arrested on Dec. 9 when police were called to a McDonald’s restaurant on a commercial strip in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after he was reported to match the description of Thompson’s killer.
Thompson was gunned down on the street as he walked to the hotel where his Minnesota-based company was holding an investor conference. The shooting was captured on security video, but the suspect eluded police before Mangione was captured about 277 miles (446 kilometers) west of New York.
Authorities say Mangione was carrying the gun used to kill Thompson, a passport, a fake ID and about $10,000 in U.S. and foreign currency. His lawyer, Dickey, has questioned the evidence for the forgery charge and the legal basis for a gun charge. He had previously indicated Mangione would fight extradition to New York while being held in a Pennsylvania state prison.
Mangione, an Ivy League computer science graduate from a prominent family, was carrying a handwritten letter that called health insurance companies “parasitic” and complained about corporate greed, according to a law enforcement bulletin obtained by The Associated Press last week.
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Sisak reported from New York.