Summary

The NYPD released unmasked photos of the suspect in the targeted killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who was shot outside the New York Hilton Midtown on Dec. 4.

Surveillance footage traced the suspect’s movements before and after the crime, including his escape on an e-bike.

Investigators uncovered cryptic words on shell casings at the scene and recovered items possibly containing DNA evidence.

Authorities are using facial recognition and offering a $10,000 reward for tips. NYC Mayor Eric Adams confirmed the attack was premeditated and involved a silencer. Motive remains unknown.

  • lettruthout
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    54323 days ago

    As the NYPD scrambled to find the killer, police deployed a swathe of investigators – uniformed and plain clothed – dogs, drones and helicopters in the hunt for the assailant, according to The Times.

    In 2023 there were 391 murders in NYC. For the police to deploy that amount of resources for this one murder kinda proves that the police work for the rich.

    • @eldavi@lemmy.ml
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      23 days ago

      i suspect that the intense response from the authorities proves how much of a priority this is for our gov’t and i hope that this becomes a trend on the rich.

    • @Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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      4823 days ago

      This isn’t just a murder, it’s potentially a statement about how the people who seem to be untouchable in the current social order are very very touchable. If that statement stands, it endangers the social order itself.

      Propaganda of the deed (or propaganda by the deed, from the French propagande par le fait) is specific political direct action meant to be exemplary to others and serve as a catalyst for revolution.

      It is primarily associated with acts of violence perpetrated by proponents of insurrectionary anarchism in the late 19th and early 20th century, including bombings and assassinations aimed at the state, the ruling class in a spirit of anti-capitalism, and church arsons targeting religious groups, even though propaganda of the deed also had non-violent applications. These acts of terrorism were intended to ignite a “spirit of revolt” by demonstrating the state, the middle and upper classes, and religious organizations were not omnipotent as well as to provoke the State to become escalatingly repressive in its response.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_deed

    • @makyo@lemmy.world
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      3623 days ago

      Yeah I feel like this is another thing that is fully normalized - the cops are there to protect wealth. Just like how the health care industry’s practices have been normalized.

    • Optional
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      1923 days ago

      True, but it wasn’t like we didn’t know. It’s just the hypocrisy of the police and the media doing their thing.

    • Chaotic Entropy
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      23 days ago

      They’re going to be pretty keen to find and make an example out of a person that did something bad to someone of worth. Can’t let that stand unanswered, or Adams will lose donors.

    • Ebby
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      15223 days ago

      I kinda get that vibe from the police too. Just $10,000? Don’t try too hard there, now.

      I was denied emergency life saving medication by my insurance (not united iir) and ended up in the hospital the next day for a week. Billed an average $15,000 a day each day.

      After the bills came in, it was apparent someone/algorithm put me in the hospital to bill the most money for profit. It was a nasty trick.

      Anyways, $10,000 seems like chump change to them. More of a “well, we tried” bounty.

      • Tiefling IRL
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        23 days ago

        I know someone who lost their dad to medical issues. Their dad’s insurance is asking them for $200k

        When my eye condition was rapidly degenerating, insurance denied me the only procedure that could slow it down. Now my eyesight is absolute trash and the only reason I can even see is because I use $1000/lens glass lenses the size of a nickel

        The deductible for my sympathy hasn’t been met

        • BigFig
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          6823 days ago

          The deductible for my sympathy hasn’t been met

          Hot damn that’s powerful

        • @NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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          2323 days ago

          Cops don’t give a fuck.

          It is the easiest go to these days (don’t worry, we’ll have even worse sooner than later) but look at Uvalde. Cops actively prevented parents from rescuing their children. Cops physically restrained a different cop who was trying to rescue his wife (she was murdered and he later resigned). They don’t even operate in their own self interest.

          So you can bet that the cop who Failure Drills the restrained suspect because “he’s a professional hitman who won’t be taken alive” will have denied claims and be desperate for any way to get life saving procedures done.

    • @MegaUltraChicken@lemmy.world
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      6223 days ago

      If they unfortunately find him, jury selection is gonna be super interesting. I would let that guy go with a handshake and a good job.

    • Tiefling IRL
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      4923 days ago

      This is the exact opposite of the Reddit Boston Bomber fiasco. What man? I only see a picture of an empty sidewalk

      • @cybersandwich@lemmy.world
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        923 days ago

        Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like they’ll need anyone to narc him out. They tracked him all the way to the hostel he was staying at and have more photos of him.

        Unless this guy was cash only with fake names and no phone in sight, they’ll probably be able to narrow it down quickly (or might already have a name they haven’t released). Maybe there’s a chance he was clever about all of that.

        But if he had a phone they’ll just do one of their dragnet warrants of people in the area at those various places and times and crossmatch the person who was at all of them. Combine that with a facial rec search against drivers license photos and other holdings, they’ll dial it in sooner than later.

        • @modus@lemmy.world
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          1423 days ago

          He ditched a phone while he was fleeing the scene and used a fake NJ ID at the hostel. Hopefully the phone was a burner.

  • @very_well_lost@lemmy.world
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    11023 days ago

    Oh shit, he’s hot…

    I kinda hate it when someone is this cool and this good looking. Save some positive qualities for the rest of us!

  • Dem Bosain
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    10623 days ago

    That man and/or woman was with me all day Tuesday and Wednesday.

    • circuscritic
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      23 days ago

      While I hope he’s never caught or arrested, if he does end up being charged, I suspect there will be a lot of donations to his legal defense fund.

      • Dem Bosain
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        2623 days ago

        I’m just saying they were both here. We played Smash Bros. and stayed up late watching movies. Can you believe they’d never seen They Live?

  • @blockheadjt@sh.itjust.works
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    10623 days ago

    The guy in those photos has a different color coat and a different backpack… what makes the NYPD think they’re the shooter? Is there only one guy in NYC that wears a coat and backpack in checks notes December?

    • @Glitterbomb@lemmy.world
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      4823 days ago

      Exactly, the one on the right isn’t even the shooter. It’s jake gyllenhaal trying to get photographs of the scene

    • @SulaymanF@lemmy.world
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      523 days ago

      If you look at the background, you’ll see the white balance of the photo is different. It’s the same coat, the photo is just tinted differently.

      • @serendepity@lemmy.world
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        23 days ago

        They’re not talking about the two unmasked photos in the article. If you look at the photos of the masked shooter, he had a different backpack (white/beige instead of black) and a different hoodie(no chest pockets).

        • @Fondots@lemmy.world
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          -323 days ago

          I’m not saying it’s what happened here, but I’ve always figured that if I intended to commit a crime and escape, I’d change my outer clothes as fast as possible. If you were wearing a mask, if you put on a different jacket, backpack, hat, pants, and shoes you’re basically unrecognizable barring any recognizable scars or tattoos or whatever.

          I don’t know how much time would have elapsed between the two pictures, but if you plan for it by wearing two layers, it wouldn’t take very long to pull a second bag from your backpack and stuff the first backpack and your jacket into the second pack.

          It looks like the guy in both sets of pictures might be wearing the same sort of neck gaiter, but that’s pretty flimsy evidence to say the least

          • @AugustWest@lemmy.world
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            722 days ago

            But why would you change into an extremely similar looking jacket and backpack and continue to walk around with the same face covering? Why would you not change into a yellow puffer jacket and put a Knicks beanie on and get rid of the damn backpack entirely?

            • @Fondots@lemmy.world
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              121 days ago

              Hypothetically, you’d still want to blend into the crowd, “yellow puffy jacket and Knicks hat” is pretty identifiable if someone were to see you changing your clothes, but darker colored midweight hooded jacket could probably describes like 75% of what everyone on any random street in New York is wearing at any given time in the winter.

              And the backpacks look like they’re totally different colors. You also wouldn’t want to ditch the bag or clothes too close to the chime scene, don’t want to leave behind evidence that might be easily linked to you.

              Can’t speak for the neck gaiter, a black gaiter is a pretty unremarkable article of clothing, I know a few people who have started wearing them semi regularly over the winter since COVID, it’s probably not enough to be identifiable on its own, he could have simply forgotten about it, it could be functional by hiding something identifiable (neck tattoos, scars, who knows, maybe even a tracheostomy that the insurance company fucked him over with in some way) he may have wanted to keep it readily at hand to quickly cover his face again if needed, etc.

              • @AugustWest@lemmy.world
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                020 days ago

                I totally agree and that was a dumb and exaggerated example. My point was only that if it really is the same person, it is too subtle of a change between jackets, where a cop on high alert would take an interest. Why not change into a completely different style of nondescript coat in a completely different color like black?

                • @Fondots@lemmy.world
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                  120 days ago

                  The picture quality leaves a bit to be desired, but the two jackets do look pretty different to me. It looks like one may be a quarter zip without any chest pockets and the other is a full zip with chest pockets. And because of the differing picture qualities it’s kind of hard to say just how similar or different the colors are, they almost look like different colors from one picture of the same jacket to the other.

                  Also there may have been some deliberate choice in that sort of dark earth tone kind of color (or at least that’s what the colors look like to me,) different witnesses could give different answers for what color that jacket even is, I could imagine people calling it black, grey brown, tan, or green, depending on the lighting, how close they were, how much attention they paid, etc. on top of eyewitnesses just being kind of generally unreliable, so until they were able to get the security footage, which probably was at least a few minutes, cops could potentially have been working on conflicting descriptions of the jacket color.

                  Side note: I work in 911 dispatch, so I spend a lot of my nights trying to get descriptions of people and vehicles, I get a lot of people really struggling to tell me what color something is that’s right in front of them, and when we have multiple callers about something we’re often going to get as many different descriptions as there are callers. I remember one major incident I worked where depending on which caller you got, the description of the subject was either an older white guy wearing camo, a young black guy in a hoodie, or 3 white teenagers in trench coats.

                  It also looks like there was just another picture released where he was wearing what looks to me like a black or navy puffy jacket.

                  Also worth noting, I don’t think the NYPD has been totally clear about where these pictures were all taken on the timeline, one was taken at the hostel he was staying at and I’m not even totally clear if it’s actually from the same day as the shooting or not.

    • Black History Month
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      322 days ago

      In the article: “It is not clear whether the photographs shared on X on the suspect are the same as those mentioned in CNN’s report.”. They’re literally making shit up.

  • Stern
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    10323 days ago

    The gunman’s motive, however, still remains a mystery.

    Radiating “Historian saying they were roommates” energy.

    • Nougat
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      4123 days ago

      And since you’ll have to fight to get those stitches covered by insurance …