BREAKING: Suspect arrested in Pennsylvania in connection with murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO

The national manhunt was underway since last week when it was revealed by police that they believed that the suspect in the case had fled New York after fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Bryan Thompson on a Manhattan street in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Thompson was outside the hilton Hotel on Sixth Ave. when he was approached by a masked man with a gun. The man shot him and fled.

The man took a bike to Central Park, ditched his backpack, and headed for an uptown bus station near the George Washington Bridge. He was seen entering the building but not leaving it, leaving officers to believe he had left the city.

After he was shot, Thompson was rushed to Mr. Sinai Hospital and was pronounced dead. He leaves behind a wife, Paulette, and two children, whose home was targeted with a bomb threat in the hours after Thompson's shooting. His wife said that there had been recent threats surrounding her husband due to his work. UnitedHealthcare is the nation's largest private insurer.

"There had been some threats," she said. "Basically, I don’t know, a lack of coverage? I don’t know details. I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him." Thompson held the job since 2021.

Newly sworn-in NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch confirmed that it was a targeted attack, saying that "many people passed the suspect, but he appeared to wait for his intended target." There was a $10,000 reward offered by the NYPD and Crimestoppers while the FBI offered $50,000.

Tisch said the suspect appeared to be "lying in wait for several minutes" before coming up behind Thompson and opening fire. She confirmed that it "does not appear to be a random act of violence."

Police recovered bullet casings on the scene emblazoned with the words "deny," "depose," and "defend," which could indicate that the motive behind the attack had something to do with healthcare and Thompson's role as the CEO. The words come from a book title that takes aim at American health-care, a monolithic industry that Americans rely on for life-saving care and everything else.

The shooter, was arrived in the city on November 24, was barely seen on surveillance footage without his face covered. The only instance his face was seen was when he was flirting with a woman who worked at the hostel where he was staying and lowered his face mask. He paid in cash for everything and used a fake ID.

In the aftermath of the shooting, there was an outcry on social media against the insurance industry, with people complaining about UnitedHealthcare's policies of denying what they call "unnecessary coverage." Former Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz was one of those who critiqued health insurance companies after Thompson's death, saying "and people wonder why we want these executives dead."

"If you have watched a loved one die because an insurance conglomerate has denied their life saving treatment as a cost cutting measure, yes, it’s natural to wish that the people who run such conglomerates would suffer the same fate," she said. Others, the New York Post reported, "joined in, celebrating Thompson’s assassination as payback for UnitedHealthcare’s refusal to cover certain medical procedures for their loved ones."

"My post uses a collective 'we' and is explaining the public sentiment. It is not me personally saying 'I want these executives dead and so we should kill them,'" she later said, thought she continued commenting in posts that Thompson was akin to serial killers. For her, it was a "ruling class" v. "working class" issue.

Health insurance companies took the step of removing photos of leadership executives from their websites following Thompson's death.