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By Khaleda Rahman
National Correspondent
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Police said they matched the fingerprints of the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare's CEO to those discovered near the scene of the crime.
Luigi Mangione, 26, was arrested on Monday after an almost weeklong manhunt for the man who gunned down Brian Thompson, 50, in an ambush attack as he walked alone to his company's annual investor conference at the New York Hilton Midtown.
His fingerprints were matched with those found on a water bottle and protein bar found near the crime scene, New York's police commissioner Jessica Tisch said on Wednesday. It is the first forensic evidence tying Mangione to the area where Thompson was shot dead on December 4.
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Tisch also said that a gun found on Mangione after his arrest matches shell casings found at the scene of the shooting.
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"First, we got the gun in question back from Pennsylvania, it's now at the NYPD crime lab. We were able to match that gun to the three shell casings that we found in Midtown at the scene of the homicide," Tisch said.
"We were also able in our crime lab to match the person of interest's fingerprints with fingerprints that we found on both the water bottle and the KIND bar near the scene of the homicide in Midtown."
Police had said that the suspect in Thompson's killing purchased a bottle of water and energy bar at a Starbucks not far from where Thompson was gunned down, and surveillance images captured inside the store were among those publicized as they searched for the shooter.
Mangione was arrested at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He remains held without bail, where he has been charged with possession of an unlicensed firearm, forgery and providing false identification to police.
He appeared in court on Tuesday and contested his extradition to New York to face second-degree murder and other charges.
"It is completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people and their lived experience," Mangione yelled as he was escorted into the courthouse in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania.
Mangione's lawyer Thomas Dickey said his client will plead not guilty to the charges in Pennsylvania and will not waive extradition and instead wants a hearing on the issue. He told reporters that he hasn't "seen any evidence that he's the shooter."
Newsweek has contacted Dickey's office for comment via an email outside normal business hours.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said on Wednesday that additional charges could be filed against Mangione. His office has filed second-degree murder, criminal possession of a forged instrument and several gun charges against Mangione.
"As we learn more about motives and other things like that ... there may be additional charges," Bragg told ABC News.
He expressed confidence that authorities had the right man in custody. "We would not charge the person if we didn't think it was the person, and we're prepared to go forward and we're on the path to accountability and justice," he said.
Mangione was likely motivated by anger at what he called "parasitic" health insurance companies and a disdain for corporate greed, The Associated Press reported, citing a law enforcement bulletin.
A manifesto found on him when he was arrested, first published by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein on his Substack blog, said that the U.S. has the most expensive healthcare system in the world and profits of large corporations continue to rise while "our life expectancy" does not.
"It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play," he wrote. "Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty."
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