A man named Larry was at the Altoona, Pennsylvania, McDonald’s yesterday when one of his friends spotted Luigi Mangione and quipped: “That looks like the shooter from New York.”
Larry, who declined to share his last name, was enjoying coffee with his friends yesterday, a ritual for him and his pals at this McDonald’s. But yesterday’s regular get-together turned into the dramatic culmination of the search for the suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Larry said one of his friends joked that the man looked like the person in the photos released by the NYPD after the Manhattan shooting, but they laughed it off. Later, Larry went to the restroom and saw Mangione sitting in the back.
“I thought it was one of the employees, because they go back here on break, and they put their hoods up, and he was in the corner with his hood up,” Larry recalled. He went to church and afterwards heard that police ended up going to that same McDonald’s.
Larry said he went back to his friend Mike and asked what made him think Mangione was the shooter.
“He said, ‘I thought he had the same backpack, hood as the day I saw him in the pictures of the shooting.’ He said he looked almost identical.”
“I think the one worker that actually thought it was him, she said, between his eyes and his eyebrows, she said, ‘I took his order.’ It was like she got in her mind. ‘Oh, my God. It’s the guy from New York,’” he added.