Bodycam footage shows moment Luigi Mangione was arrested at Pennsylvania McDonald's

Newly unsealed police bodycam footage shows the moment officers arrested Luigi Mangione at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, days after UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson was shot dead in Manhattan.

The footage, released on Friday after CNN successfully petitioned a Manhattan judge for its unsealing, comes from the body cameras of eight Altoona police officers. It shows officers descending on the fast-food restaurant on the morning of 9 December 2024, five days after Thompson, 50, was gunned down outside a midtown Manhattan hotel where his company was holding its annual investors conference.

In one video, officers ask Mangione — seated at a table in a ski hat, surgical face mask and winter coat — to lower his mask. “That’s 100% him,” one officer says as they step outside to speak out of Mangione’s earshot. “I told you, man,” another responds.

Officers order Mangione to put his hands on his head and confront him over a phony New Jersey driver’s licence bearing the name Mark Rosario. “You give a false name to us again, you’re gonna be arrested for false ID,” one officer warns. When he finally gives his real name, he tells them: “I clearly shouldn’t have.”

Later videos show officers patting Mangione down, reading him his rights, and searching his backpack — recovering the 9mm handgun authorities later confirmed was the murder weapon, along with a silencer, ammunition and a journal prosecutors say revealed his intent to “wack” a health insurance executive.

The footage had previously been seen only inside the courtroom during a suppression hearing last December, when the defence unsuccessfully argued evidence recovered during the arrest should be thrown out.

Mangione pleaded guilty in August to federal stalking charges and faces life in prison at sentencing in December. He also faces murder charges in New York state court, though those proceedings have been postponed indefinitely as his lawyers seek to have the case thrown out.