New York State prosecutors gave a minute by minute account of Luigi Mangione’s arrest during ongoing pretrial hearings at Manhattan Criminal Court on Tuesday. Mr. Mangione, who is charged with murdering the CEO of UntiedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, is trying to suppress key evidence in his upcoming trial, arguing that he was not read his Miranda warnings and that his backpack was searched without a warrant when he was arrested at a McDonald’s outside of Altoona, Pennsylvania. But the prosecution told a different story.   

“If you get the New York City shooter, I’ll buy you a hoagie,” a lieutenant from the Altoona police department texted patrol officer Joseph Detwiler on December 9, 2024, as the officer was on his way to a McDonald’s, whose manager had called 911 and reported that “there is a male in the store that looks like the New York City shooter,” Mr. Detwiler testified on Tuesday. 

Five days earlier, Thompson, 50, a father of two, had been on his way to an annual investor conference at the Hilton Hotel at Midtown Manhattan, when a man approached him from behind and shot him first in the leg, then in the back, causing Thompson to collapse on the sidewalk. Thompson died about half an hour later at the hospital. The killer vanished, triggering a nationwide manhunt.

Mr. Detwiler, who has been with the Altoona police department for over 14 years, after serving in the Air Force for four years, was called to witness stand on Tuesday to detail the arrest of Mr. Mangione on December 9. He testified that he had heard about the shooting before because he saw photographs and surveillance videos released by the New York police department on television.    

“I watch a lot of Fox News,” the officer said. “And I saw a lot of videos of the shooting.” Asked by the prosecutor how he felt about the shooting, he replied, “I thought it was awful. I was hysteric.” He was also, he pointed out several times, very aware of the fact that the murder weapon had not been found yet. He said he had seen news about officers searching for a gun in The Lake in Central Park, which he accurately referred to as a “pond.” 

“I remember them saying, the firearm was not recovered,” he testified, and that driving to the Macdonald’s, he didn’t think he was actually going to encounter the shooter there. “I didn’t think it was gonna be him.” He told the court, adding that he accepted his lieutenant’s offer to buy him a hoagie if he caught the shooter. He texted back, “consider it done.” 

But once at the McDonald’s, the officer was surprised to see that the man, quietly eating his breakfast in the corner of the lobby, did in fact resemble the suspect on the images he had seen on the Fox News Channel. In a cautious move, he walked by the table, where the man was sitting, pretending to go to the bathroom.   

“I walked by. I wanted to see what he did when he saw us,” the officer testified. 

While Officer Detwiler testified, the court watched body camera footage from several different police officers who were at the McDonald’s. Leading the court through this footage minute by minute, the veteran assistant district attorney, Joel Seidemann, carefully built his case that there was nothing unlawful about Mr. Mangione’s arrest. 

Officer Detwiler had entered the McDonald’s together with his colleague Tyler Frye, whose body camera the court was mostly watching. “I believe he (Mr. Mangione) was on his computer. It was a laptop,” Officer Detwiler testified. The court saw the officer approach Mr. Mangione, who had a laptop on his knees, which he shut as soon as the two police officers walked up to his table. 

The man was wearing a medical mask, the officer testified, and he asked him to take down the mask and then he knew right away, it was the murder suspect from New York.  

“I asked him to pull it (the mask) down,” the officer testified. And then, “I knew it was him immediately. I stayed calm.” 

When Officer Detwiler asked Mr. Mangione for his name, he replied his name was Mark Rosario and then showed the officers a driver’s license with that name. An enlarged, poster sized copy of that driver’s license was brought into the court and positioned next to the witness stand. 

The same license, New York investigation had previously confirmed, was used by the suspected shooter to check into a youth hostel in the Manhattan neighborhood of Bloomingdale on November 30, four days before Thompson’s murder.

In their pretrial motion, the defense had argued that any statements Mr. Mangione made to the officer, including those regarding the fake identification he carried on him and presented to the officers, should be precluded from trial, because the officers had failed to read the defendant his Miranda rights. 

But now it seemed that the officers were merely asking Mr. Mangione for his ID, which – upon reasonable suspicion – is not an uncommon nor illegal procedure. When the officers ran the ID, the report came back that the ID was fraudulent. .

Officer Detwiler then asked Mr. Mangione to lift his hands over his head and frisked him. “I wanted to make sure he didn’t have any weapons on him – for my safety and Frye’s (the other officer’s) safety,” he said.

He did not find any weapons on Mr. Mangione, and noted that he was wearing “several layers of clothing” and that “the coat was very puffy.” 

Then the officer went outside and called for back-up. And while they waited for the backup to come, officer Detwiler tried to keep the situation as calm as possible. In one instance, he was even whistling along to “Jingle Bells” that was playing at the McDonald’s.  

While the Christmas music was coming from the loudspeakers on this morning in early December, the court watched the video in which the officer was standing next to table, and Mr. Mangione was sitting on his chair, leaning into the corner of the wall behind him. At one point, the officer asked Mr. Mangione, what had brought him to Altoona, if he was, perhaps visiting family. Mr. Mangione mumbled that he is “homeless.” 

As the court watched these scenes on the screens in the courtroom, Mr. Mangione, who wore a different suit on Tuesday, a navy suit instead of a gray one, over a power-pink checkered button shirt, also watched himself being arrested. Much like on Monday, he was calm, and curious, looking around the courtroom, but also focused on the case, taking notes and talking to his lawyers.

Once the backup arrived at the MacDonald’s, Officer Detwiler told Mr. Mangione that he was “under police investigation” and asked for his “real name,” and warned him that if he was going to lie again, he would be arrested. 

This time, Mr. Mangione told the officers that his name was Luigi Nicholas Mangione and that he was born on May 6, 1998. Another officer asked him, why he had lied about his name before, and Mr. Mangione replied, “I clearly shouldn’t had.” He added that he gave the false name, because it was on the ID card he carried.    

After the officers ran that name and birthday, Mr. Mangione was read his Miranda rights, and warned that anything he said could be used against him in a court of law.  The officer moved the backpack onto a table. And then, while Bing Crosby’s “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” played over the loudspeaker, Mr. Mangione was handcuffed and searched. During that second search, officers found a knife on him, and when officers searched Mr. Mangione’s backpack, they found a 3-D printed handgun. 

The defense has argued that searching the backpack without a search warrant was not lawful and thus the gun, which later turned out to match the shell casings found at the crime scene, should be inadmissible at trial.    The prosecutor asked Officer Detwiler to read to the court the Altoona police book, where it stated that searching a person and a person’s bag is permitted without a warrant, if there is probable cause for suspicion.   

The officers also searched Mr. Mangione’s wallet, where they found a large amount of cash, Mr. Detwiler did not specify how much exactly, but testified that Mr. Mangione also carried foreign currencies on him. The court later saw a photograph, where the money was laid out on a table at the police station. It wasn’t clear from which country the foreign currency stemmed.   

The direct examination lasted until after the lunch break. Karen Friedman Agnifilo, the lead defense attorney on Mr. Mangione’s team started to cross-examine the witness at about 3:30pm.

Mr. Mangione is being prosecuted in three separate jurisdictions for crimes relating to Thompson’s murder: in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested, in New York state court, and in federal court. The four-count indictment brought against him by federal prosecutors at the Southern District of New York includes the death penalty eligible charge of “murder through use of a firearm.” Attorney General Pam Bondi has said she wants Mr. Mangione put to death.      

He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.