Today is Monday, December 9, 2024. A breaking story involves that hooded assassin of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last week who has now been identified and apprehended in Pennsylvania. The 26-year-old suspect has been identified as Luigi Mangione, and he was ordered held without bail and did not enter a plea in his first court appearance in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. CNN has supplied live updates to this story in an online blurb called “Luigi Mangione, the suspect in UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting, appears in court,” written by Elise Hammond, Lauren Mascarenhas, Michelle Watson, Steve Almasy, and Taylor Romine.

The young suspect was arrested on a gun charge after being picked up while eating at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, following an employee calling the police, the NYPD chief of detectives said. Mangione had multiple fake IDs and a 3-D printed gun with a suppressor, according to officials.

When officers approached him in Altoona and asked him if he had been to New York recently, he “became visibly nervous” and started “kind of shaking.” Authorities have said the suspect has been in the state for “several days.”

What nails him as the alleged healthcare killer is that he was in possession of a document railing against the healthcare industry, a police official who has seen the document told CNN.

As for the suspect’s personal background, it was discovered that he was an Ivy League graduate from Maryland. In another press briefing, a former roommate of Mangione’s, R.J. Martin, has informed CNN’s Erin Burnett that he’s “beyond shocked” by the news that Mangione could be involved in the Manhattan slaying. Martin said that it’s “unfathomable” that Mangione could be accused of such a crime.

Martin said the two – who lived together in a co-living and co-working community in Hawaii – weren’t just flatmates, they were friends. Describing his former roommate, Martin stated, “He was a very thoughtful person. Communicated really well, was friendly, had good relationships with everyone. He was even, in some ways, a bit of a leader.”

According to Martin, their friendship eventually fizzled out after Mangione confided in him that he had a bad back and that he had surgery earlier this year that left him with screws in his body. He said the suspected assassin called him once after sending him some very “heinous” X-rays of his spine and that he didn’t call him back. What a good friend that was!

This nascent profile of this young killer leaves everyone with just more questions, not answers. However, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro said the right thing about Mangione, which undercut all of the buzz from social media nuts portraying him as a hero. He said bluntly, Mangione “is no hero” and went on to state, “In America, we do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint.” Shapiro suggested “The real hero in this story is the person who called 911 at McDonald’s this morning.”

In a somewhat related case that was just adjudicated today, a Manhattan jury found the young man accused of killing homeless 30-year-old street artist Jordan Neely on a New York subway car last year not guilty of criminally negligent homicide. Prosecutors were attempting to prove that Daniel Penny, the young former Marine, used actions that were “reckless” and “negligent” in the chokehold that ended Neely’s life in front of other shocked witnesses. Here a 12-person jury decided that Penny’s actions were not criminal in nature. The details of this case are reported in an article for Patch, a Forest Hills online news journal, by David Luces, entitled “Daniel Perry Is Acquitted Of All Charges In NYC Subway Chokehold Case.”

This past Friday, a Manhattan judge agreed to drop the more serious charge of manslaughter in the second degree after jurors twice were not able to come to a verdict on the manslaughter charge, according to multiple media reports.

Defense lawyers for Penny argued that Neely had been shouting and demanding money before the Marine veteran intervened.

The fatal incident occurred on May 1, 2023, on a northbound F train headed toward the Broadway-Lafayette station (there but for the grace of God go I; I usually take this train to that very station to go to my bookstores or to the Angelika Theatre, so I could have been on that train, possibly). I know that I was actually out of the city on that date since I was just beginning our cross-country drive from California to New York with our good friend “Patricia.” Anyway, Penny brought Neely down with the assistance of two other passengers and then proceeded to put him in a chokehold for 6 minutes.

The victim had struggled with homelessness and mental illness and, according to witnesses, had been acting in an aggressive manner before the fatal incident.

Penny’s lawyers claimed that the young man had not intended to kill Neely but was holding him long enough for the police to arrive.

At the time, the controversial case succeeded in polarizing city residents, many of whom have personal experiences with disorder on the subways, and raised broader questions about mental health, race relations, and the line between protector and vigilante. Look, I ride the subway all the time and I do encounter these unfortunate denizens of the underground. I’ve learned to have a sixth sense when there could be trouble afoot and I usually leave the car where imminent danger could be looming or I cast my eyes downward and escape into my book or newspaper (which will be rarer these days because of our moratorium on reading the news).

Personally, I can’t say I’m pleased altogether with this verdict because it might set a dangerous precedent when it comes to perceiving threats on the subway in the near or distant future. How many other Daniel Pennys are out there waiting for their chance of achieving their 15-minute’s worth of fame? At the time, Penny’s actions were gloriously embraced by repulsive far-right figures out in the ether. While those on the left condemned his actions and called him a violent vigilante who took another man’s life.

If you really are interested in learning about our broken mental health system, it’s all documented in the fascinating and detailed work by Jonathan Rosen called The Best Minds in which he provides a heartrending account of his boyfriend friend, Michael Laudor, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and eventually killed his pregnant fiancee because he thought she was a rag doll. Rosen painstakingly writes about the evolution of our treatment of the mentally ill and how it has come up painfully short in many instances. Go read it if you have the time and are interested in knowing why so many mentally ill seem to be on our streets these days. In his book, you will find out why.

And so it went!