San Francisco Police Shared Luigi Mangione’s Name With FBI Before Arrest

Crime

As surveillance images of the then-unidentified suspect in the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson circulated across the U.S., a San Francisco police officer recognized his face.

The officer had been investigating a missing persons report filed by 26-year-old Luigi Mangione’s mother weeks before, and contacted the FBI on Dec. 5, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The FBI confirmed the agency had received the information from San Francisco police in a statement to HuffPost on Friday. But Mangione was not named as a person of interest or suspect until he was recognized by an employee of a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Dec. 9.

“Has this name come up in your investigation at all?” NBC’s Savannah Guthrie asked NYPD officials on Dec. 10, pointing to the widely circulating surveillance photos.

“This was not a name that was called in to us,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch replied.

A surveillance footage still circulated by NYPD.

The FBI’s statement on Friday seemed to contradict that.

“FBI New York conducted routine investigative activity and referred this and other leads to the New York City Police Department as part of our assistance to them in their investigation,” the statement said.

The NYPD did not immediately respond to questions from HuffPost, and the FBI did not say when it passed on Mangione’s name to detectives.

Mangione’s arrest shocked his friends, several of whom told news outlets or have written on social media that they hadn’t heard from him in months.

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In her missing persons report, filed in November, Mangione’s mother said she’d last spoken to him in July, the San Francisco Standard reported.

An attorney for Mangione has said he has yet to see evidence that his client is the shooter. His family said in a statement that they were devastated by the news of his arrest and didn’t address whether they believed the man in the surveillance footage was Mangione.

“We only know what we have read in the media,” the family’s statement said. “Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest. We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved.”