Classmate of suspect held in healthcare CEO assassination reveals what he was like in school

A former classmate of Luigi Mangione said he “almost had a heart attack” after finding out the 26-year-old was arrested Monday on suspicion of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

“He would be the last person I would have thought would do something like that,” said Freddie Leatherbury, who attended Gilman School, an all-boys private school in Baltimore, with Mangione The Baltimore Sun shortly after his arrest. “He was a nice boy.”

Police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, arrested Mangione on Monday after a McDonald’s employee recognized him and called local police.

“Responding officers interviewed the suspect, who was acting suspiciously and carrying multiple fake IDs and a U.S. passport,” New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch told reporters. “Upon further investigation, officers recovered a firearm from him and a silencer, both consistent with the weapon used in the murder.”

Mangione’s backstory quickly came to light after his arrest, including the fact that he was named 2016 valedictorian of his high school with an annual income of $37,000.

Leatherbury said Mangione entered the private school in sixth grade.

“He was a smart kid,” Leatherbury added. “He was a big math guy” and reportedly belonged to several academic clubs in addition to the school’s soccer team.

A teacher at the school repeated that characterization to The Washington Post, saying Mangione was a “good spirit.”

“He was very smart, lively and full of life,” said the teacher, who spoke to the newspaper on condition of anonymity. “I’m devastated because it just doesn’t fit with the boy I knew years ago.”

Mangione also claims on his X account to have a bachelor’s and master’s degree in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school.

However, his exact motive for allegedly shooting a healthcare CEO in cold blood remains unclear.

A number of people who appear to be Mangione’s relatives had been trying to reach him for weeks on X, formerly Twitter, suggesting that he had disappeared or otherwise cut off contact with some people close to him.

“@PepMangione Hey, are you okay? No one has heard from you in months and it seems your family is looking for you,” user @TheRealMandusa wrote on X on October 30.

“I think of you and pray in your name every day,” another X user @Collin30923201P wrote on November 25th. “Know that you are missed and loved.”

Mangione’s digital footprint also indicates that he consumes the work of radicals. The Ivy League graduate reviewed the book by the infamous “Unabomber” Theodore Kaczynski on the book review website Goodreads. Industrial society and its futurewhere he rated it four out of five stars.

“Reads like a series of lemmas on the question of quality of life in the 21st century,” Mangione wrote. “It is easy to quickly and thoughtlessly dismiss this as the manifesto of a madman in order to avoid confronting some of the unpleasant issues it identifies. But it is simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society were.”

He added: “When all other forms of communication fail, violence is essential to survival.”

“You may not like his methods, but if you look at things from his perspective, it’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution.”

According to reports, police a handwritten “manifesto” was found during Mangione’s arrest, in which he detailed his disdain for healthcare companies.

“I apologize for any argument or trauma, but it had to be done,” the written notes said, according to CNN. “These parasites were tough. I acted alone. I finance myself.”