New York police department(NYPD) have released two photos of an unmasked individual sought for questioning in connection with the fatal shooting of a healthcare executive.
Brian Thompson, 50, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was shot in the back on Wednesday morning outside the Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan.
The assailant fled the scene without taking any of Thompson’s belongings, leading police to suspect the killing was premeditated.
Investigators are utilizing facial recognition technology and analyzing bullet casings with cryptic messages to identify the suspect. The motive for the shooting remains undisclosed.
How did the shooting and escape happen?
The shooting occurred around 6:45 a.m. EST (11:45 GMT) in a bustling area of Manhattan near Times Square and Central Park. Brian Thompson was scheduled to speak at an investor conference later that day.
According to police, the suspect—wearing a black face mask and a light brown or cream-colored jacket—waited for approximately five minutes outside the Hilton hotel, where Thompson was expected to speak.
Thompson, who arrived on foot, was shot in the back and leg and was pronounced dead about 30 minutes later at a nearby hospital.
NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny disclosed that the suspect’s weapon appeared to jam during the attack but was quickly fixed, allowing the shooting to continue.
CCTV footage analyzed by BBC Verify shows the gunman had fitted a suppressor, or silencer, to his pistol.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a former NYPD officer, noted on MSNBC that the use of a silencer in such an incident was unprecedented in his career.
“I have never seen a silencer before,” he said. “That was really something shocking to us all.”
Investigators reportedly believe the firearm is a BT Station Six 9, a weapon which is marketed as tracing its roots back to pistols used by Second World War-era Allied special operations forces.
Police have reportedly visited gun stores in Connecticut to try to determine where the weapon was purchased.
After the shooting, video shows the suspect fleeing the scene on foot. Officials initially said the suspect used an electric Citi Bike owned by Lyft.
But Lyft, which owns and operates Citi Bike, later said it had been told by the NYPD that one of its vehicles had not been used, according to the BBC’s US partner, CBS News.
The investigation
The investigation into Thompson’s killing is currently focused on a few key leads that police are using to identify the suspect.
On Thursday, officials released two images of an unmasked man, with the NYPD stating that he is “wanted for questioning” in connection with the murder.
Law enforcement sources told CBS that the individual is believed to have used a fake ID to check into a local hostel, with the name provided being fraudulent and not linked to any real person.
Investigators also suspect that the person of interest traveled to New York on a bus originating from Atlanta, Georgia, days before the shooting, according to CBS sources familiar with the investigation. It remains unclear whether the individual boarded the bus in Atlanta or at a later stop.
It is not confirmed whether this individual is the same person as the suspect.
Earlier, police revealed that the suspect was captured on camera at a nearby Starbucks just minutes before the shooting took place.
While he is masked in the image, police sources told CBS that the mask is pulled down far enough so that his eyes and part of his nose can be seen.
With that, investigators are using facial recognition software to try to find a match.
Investigators have so far not identified a motive in the killing, although police did note that the assailant fled without taking any of Thompson’s belongings.
Additionally, police are testing three bullet casings and three live rounds found at the scene for DNA.
The words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” were discovered on the casings, two law enforcement sources told CBS.
Investigators suspect the incident may be linked to the “three D’s of insurance,” a term often used by critics of the industry to describe tactics employed by insurers to deny payment claims in America’s complex, predominantly private healthcare system.
The phrase echoes—but does not exactly match—the title of the 2010 book Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It by Jay Feinman, a legal scholar at Rutgers University.
The book is marketed as both an exposé of the insurance industry and a practical guide for navigating it. Professor Feinman declined to comment when contacted by the BBC.
During their investigation, police recovered a mobile phone from an alley along the suspect’s escape route.
Authorities are analyzing the phone, while a coffee cup believed to have been discarded by the suspect has been sent to an NYPD crime lab for fingerprint analysis to potentially identify the individual or trace their movements.
A search warrant was also executed at a location on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where surveillance footage captured the suspect entering earlier that day.
The site is near the Frederick Douglass housing project, where police say the suspect was seen on video around 5:00 a.m., hours before the attack.
Additionally, police planned to search Thompson’s room at the nearby Marriott, located just down the street from the crime scene.
Thompson joined UnitedHealth, the largest private insurer in the U.S., in 2004 after working at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
He rose to become CEO in 2021, steering the company through a period of significant profitability.
In an interview with MSNBC, Thompson’s wife said that there had “been some threats” against him earlier, although she was unable to provide details.
“I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him,” she said.
According to police in Thompson’s hometown of Maple Grove, Minnesota, there had previously been one suspicious incident at his home in 2018.
The incident was cleared with no criminal activity detected. No additional details were provided.