A highschool classmate of the suspect underneath arrest for fatally gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson final week mentioned the information “got here out of nowhere,” and described the scenario as “simply, actually surreal.”

“He had loads of issues going for him,” Ellison Jordan, who graduated from the Gilman College alongside 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, informed The Impartial. “He was at all times cool individuals.”

Jordan attended Gilman, a prestigious all-boys prep college in Baltimore, with Mangione, and located him to be “a sensible dude,” and “an everyday man,” he mentioned on Tuesday.

“I’m being delicate to Luigi, as a result of I went to high school with him,” Jordan, who has not spoken to the media beforehand about Mangione, went on. “I hope he didn’t do it. I’m praying he didn’t do it. It’s nonetheless ‘allegedly.’ It’s actually surprising.”

On the similar time, Jordan emphasised that he was retaining Thompson in his ideas, saying he was absolutely conscious the exec may “by no means return to his household.”

Jordan, a high soccer prospect who went on to play on the defensive position at Penn State, remembered Mangione, who was the valedictorian of their class, as “clearly a really sensible individual,” albeit a “very quiet” one who “didn’t actually say a lot.”

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When he heard his former buddy had been accused of homicide, Jordan, 27, mentioned it took a short while for it to sink in.

“I heard concerning the capturing of the CEO, however to search out out that the individual of curiosity was him? It was surprising,” Jordan mentioned. “It didn’t appear actual… For him to have allegedly performed this, it’s simply actually laborious to place into phrases. I do know that’s a cliché, however I actually don’t know what occurred… It’s simply very unlucky, very loopy general.”

Thompson, a 50-year-old father of two who lived in Minnesota, was fatally shot on December 4 as he arrived on the Hilton resort in Midtown Manhattan for an investor convention, the place he was scheduled to ship an tackle on UnitedHealthcare’s monetary outlook for the approaching 12 months. As he arrived shortly earlier than 7 a.m., a masked man clad in all-black stepped out from between two vehicles and pumped a number of rounds into his again and leg utilizing a silenced 9mm semi-automatic handgun. Thompson was rushed to the close by Mt. Sinai West hospital, the place he was pronounced lifeless a short while later.

Investigators recovered a number of spent and stay rounds on the crime scene with the phrases “deny,” “depose,” and “defend” scrawled on them, which appeared to echo the title of a 2010 e book by Rutgers regulation professor Jay Feinman, who explored the myriad methods insurance coverage firms deny affected person claims to extend income.

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A multi-state manhunt was promptly launched, which Mangione, a UPenn graduate, managed to evade for a number of days. On Monday, he was noticed at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, by an worker who known as police. Officers searched Mangione and located a so-called ghost gun with a silencer, plenty of pretend IDs, together with one he used days earlier to examine right into a Manhattan hostel underneath an assumed identify, and a handwritten manifesto railing in opposition to the American healthcare trade, based on authorities.

In response to Jordan, Mangione wasn’t outwardly struggling, healthwise, throughout his highschool years.

“He didn’t discuss any medical points,” he mentioned, including that Mangione “got here from a fantastic household, and also you don’t anticipate one thing like this to return from an individual like him.”

Jordan “desires to hope” for Mangione, but in addition should be “thoughtful of the one that misplaced his life.”

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“I knew him, I knew what he stood for. He had no contentious vibe,” Jordan mentioned. “He didn’t have any sort of vibes like that, none of us did. It’s only a shock to all of us…  There’s not so much to say past that.”

Though a motive has not but been definitively pinned down, Mangione reportedly had extreme again points that induced him debilitating ache and in addition hampered his love life.

RJ Martin, who owns a co-living house in Honolulu the place Mangione stayed for about six months, mentioned the Maryland native moved to Hawaii to get wholesome earlier than a deliberate again operation in 2023. Martin mentioned Mangione had proven him X-rays of his again, which “regarded heinous, with simply large screws going into his backbone.”

“His backbone was form of misaligned,” Martin informed The New York Occasions. “He mentioned his decrease vertebrae had been virtually like a half-inch off, and I believe it pinched a nerve. Generally he’d be doing nicely and different instances not.”

Following Mangione’s surgical procedure, he fell out of contact with family and friends, based on a number of sources. Aaron Cranston, who went to Gilman with Jordan and Mangione, informed the Occasions that Mangione’s family members reached out to him and others after the process as a result of nobody had heard from him for months.

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Mangione’s mother and father, sister, and cousin, Nino Mangione — a Republican state legislator — didn’t reply to quite a few requests for remark.

On Tuesday, Nino canceled a political look set to happen at Hayfields, a rustic membership in Baltimore County based by his grandparents and now run by his uncle, Luigi Mangione’s father.

“Due to the character of this horrible scenario involving my Cousin I don’t imagine it’s applicable to carry my fundraising occasion scheduled for this Thursday at Hayfields,” he wrote on Fb. “I’m going to postpone this occasion till later at a extra applicable time… I need to thanks on your ideas, prayers, and assist. My household and I are heartbroken and ask that you simply bear in mind the household of Mr. Thompson in your prayers.”