Police in New York have released two photos of a man without a face mask for questioning in connection to the death of healthcare chief executive.
UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson, 50, was gunned down at the back on Wednesday morning at the Hilton hotel in the Midtown Manhattan.
The attacker escaped after the scuffle without stealing Thompson’s property. Police think that the murder of the victim was premeditated.
The police investigators are also employing facial recognition technology and bullets that have inscriptions as the means of identifying the suspect. They have not place any identity on what led to the shooting.
What led to shooting and escape?
The shooting took place at about 06:7pm EST (12:45 am GMT) in one of the most vibrant neighborhoods of Manhattan not far from the Times Square and Central Park. Thompson had been expected to address an investor meeting later in the day.
Police said the suspect was wearing a black face mask and a light brown or cream-coloured jacket as he waited for Thompson for about five minutes outside the Hilton hotel where he was scheduled to speak.
Thompson, who came to the scene on foot, received a bullet in the back and another in the leg and died thirty minutes later in a nearby hospital.
The New York Police Department (NYPD) Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said that the suspect’s gun got a mechanical problem but he was able to correct it and proceed firing.
However, CCTV footage suggests that the gunman had fitted a suppressor, which is also called a silencer to the pistol, BBC Verify has realised.
The incumbent mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, who is a former police officer, said in MSNBC that he had never seen a silencer involved in a shooting.
‘I have never seen a silencer before,’ he said. ‘Something’ that was really shocking to us all.’
Police sources say that the pistol is a BT Station Six 9, a gun which is advertised as being a descendant of the second world war second allied special forces pistol.
Police are said to have gone to gun stores in Connecticut in a bid to try and identify where the weapon was bought from.
Post shooting, the suspect is seen jogging away from the scene in this video. Early reports suggested that the suspect adopted an electric Citi Bike belonging to Lyft.
Lyft, which owns and operates Citi Bike, was later to state that it had been informed by the NYPD that one of its vehicles had not been used, CBS News’ BBC partner reported.
The investigation
Until now, the search for Thompson’s killer has based itself on a few leads that police are employing to look for the suspect.
Police officials published two photos of the man without a face covering on Thursday that the NYPD stated was a person of interest in the killing.
Police say that from the evidence gathered the man is thought to have used a counterfeit identification card to register at a backpackers’ lodge in the region. The name used is fake and is believed to be a name of an individual persona that is not real.
Officials think that the person of interest traveled in a bus that departed from Atlanta, Georgia to New York days before the shooting, CBS quotes a source familiar with the probe. There is no way of knowing whether this particular individual boarded the bus on in Atlanta or at some other time during a stop.
There is still much ambiguity about whether he is the same person as the suspect.
Before that, police shared that the suspect was captured on CCTV at a Starbucks a few minutes before the shooting.
Even though he is wearing a mask in the picture, the police said to CBS that the mask is pulled low enough to show his eyes and a portion of his nose.
With that, investigators have resorted to using facial recognition software in order to make a match.
There has been no stated reason for the murders but police commented that Thompson’s attacker got away without stealing and personal property.
Moreover, three bullet casings and three live bullets recovered at the scene are expected to go through DNA analysis.
The words “deny”, “defend” and “depose” were found on the casings, two police insiders said to CBS.
Police think that this might refer to ‘the three D’s of insurance’ which is a phrase known to those who oppose the insurance business.
The terms relate to insurance strategies applied in the functioning of the American mostly private healthcare system to deny payments to patients.
The words resemble – but are not exactly the same as – the title of a book called Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Do Not Pay Your Claims and What You Need To Do About It.
The book was written in 2010 by legal scholar Jay Feinman who is affiliated with Rutgers University, New Jersey. It was sold under the tag: ‘The story of a reporter that took on the insurance industry and a guide for the American people on the insurance game.’
Professor Feinman did not respond to BBC communication when it contacted him.
A mobile phone was found in the main alley where the suspect was said to have fled from the scene. Police stated that they are “processing through” the phone.
A coffee cup the suspect was thought to have used and then threw away has also been taken for fingerprints and taken to an NYPD crime lab in the hope that it will help identify the suspect or paint a picture of events.
Police also claimed they conducted a search in a building in manhattan’s Upper West Side in which he had been captured on CCTV entering earlier in the day the police said.
The location is near the Frederick Douglas housing project, where police say surveillance video showed the suspect outside at approximately 05:00 the morning of the crime.
Police earlier said they would also search Thompson’s room in the Marriott hotel opposite the street where the incident occurred.
And Thompson became a senior vice-president at UnitedHealth, the largest private insurer in the United States, after serving at the accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers since 2004.
He has worked his way up through the company and became the CEO in 2021 during some of the most profitable years in the business.
Thompson’s wife told MSNBC in an interview that there had indeed been threats against her husband earlier but she did not elaborate.
‘All I know is that he mentioned that there were some individuals who have been harassing him,’ she said.
Earlier, the police from Maple Grove, where Thompson is from, reported that there had been one incident of suspicion in his residence in 2018.
The case was resolved without any criminality involved. No other information was shared with the reader.
