Bodycam footage shows Altoona cop ‘immediately’ peg Luigi Mangione as CEO shooting suspect

MANHATTAN (CN) — When Joseph Detwiler got a call last December to respond to a McDonald’s, where a customer purportedly looked like the suspect sought in the New York City shooting of a health care CEO, the Altoona, Pennsylvania, cop didn’t take it particularly seriously.

“10-4, we’ll be on that,” he can be heard replying on bodycam footage, played to a Manhattan criminal court for the first time on Tuesday.

Describing the video to the judge, Detwiler admitted he was being “semi-sarcastic” when he said that. Aware of the call, Detwiler said his supervisor promised to buy him a hoagie if he actually arrested the suspect in the high-profile slaying of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson more than 200 miles away.

“Consider it done,” Detwiler texted his supervisor, though he wasn’t optimistic, saying Tuesday: “I did not think it was going to be the person they thought it was.”

But that changed quickly when Detwiler and his partner arrived at the McDonald’s and got a look at the supposedly suspicious customer: a man clad in a heavy black coat, tan hat and blue surgical mask.

Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidmann asked the officer when he knew he was looking at the murder suspect.

“As soon as he pulled the mask down for us,” Detwiler said.

The Altoona police officer testified in a dayslong hearing on evidence suppression in Mangione’s murder case. Mangione’s defense team claims that responding officers, including Detwiler, failed to inform their client that he was free to leave and didn’t have to answer questions, unlawfully detaining him in effect.

The defense also argues that the cops searched Mangione’s backpack without a warrant. The state says the bag, which was at Mangione’s feet when Detwiler approached him, contained a handwritten manifesto confessing to Thompson’s killing, as well as the 3D-printed firearm used in the killing.

But prosecutors insist the officers acted by the books, and are trying to use Detwiler’s testimony to bolster their argument. The officer testified that, during the 23 minutes between him first questioning Mangione and placing him in cuffs, he never once said Mangione was under arrest, nor that he wasn’t free to leave.

He also said he never mentioned the shooting in New York City.

Still, the admitted Fox News buff said he had seen a plethora of coverage about Thompson’s murder, including the security footage of the suspect’s face that had been released by the New York City Police Department.

“I watch a lot of Fox News and I saw a lot of videos and articles on the shooting,” Detwiler said in court. “I saw the person’s picture many, many, many times prior to that.”

The cop said he also found it strange that Mangione was wearing a face mask in the town limits of Altoona.

“We don’t wear masks,” Detwiler said. “We have antibodies.”

Prosecutors played extensive bodycam footage for the court on Tuesday, bouncing between the perspective of Detwiler and the other responding officers as they confronted Mangione in the midst of a multi-day manhunt for Thompson’s killer. Mangione, draped in a dark navy suit, sat at the defense table and intently watched the footage from nearly a year ago.

In the clips, Mangione told the officers that his name was Mark Rosario from New Jersey and handed them a phony ID matching that info. He also said he was homeless.

“Have you been up in New York recently?” Detwiler asked several times before getting a response. Mangione eventually said he had not. On cross examination, Mangione’s lawyer Karen Agnifilo painted the repeated prods as an unlawful fishing expedition about the New York shooting.

Detwiler later told his supervisor that Mangione seemed “nervous as hell” and that he was “100% sure” they had the man being sought in New York, per the footage.

More officers could be seen filing into the McDonald’s. As Detwiler and the other cops asked questions, Mangione resumed eating his meal, first taking bites out of a hash brown and then transitioning to a steak breakfast sandwich — a selection Detwiler commended.

“That’s my favorite,” Detwiler told Mangione.

It was among the small talk Detwiler said he made to keep the situation calm and relaxed while his fellow officers tried verifying the Mark Rosario license, to no avail. When it became clear that Mangione had given them a false name, the officers confronted him and asked why.

“I clearly shouldn’t have,” Mangione can be heard saying. “That was the ID I had in my wallet. I had a fake ID.”

With that, Mangione was arrested for the phony license. As officers patted him down, they emptied his pockets of change, a strand of rope, a jar of peanut butter and a blue floral bag stuffed with $100 bills and some foreign currency.

“I’ll Be Home for Christmas” blared on the McDonald’s loudspeaker while he was being cuffed.

Mangione was booked that day on false identification charges. But he was later extradited to New York, where he faces murder charges in both state and federal charges. Federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against him.

The suppression hearing for his state case has drawn significant fanfare for followers of Mangione’s case, with several dozen members of the public lining benches in the Manhattan courtroom of New York Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro on Tuesday. It could stretch into next week as prosecutors look to illicit testimony from more than two dozen witnesses about the case’s evidence.

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