Cops Who Arrested Luigi Mangione Gave Him a Snack to Get DNA: Report

It’s been a plot point in countless TV police procedurals. And now it’s a question in one of the most followed homicide cases in recent memory. The police who arrested Luigi Mangione for allegedly killing a healthcare CEO in late 2024 gave him a snack just to get his DNA, according to a new report from ABC News. At least that’s what his local lawyer in Pennsylvania alleges.

Mangione was arrested on Dec. 9 at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania after a patron of the restaurant reportedly told a worker to call the police. Mangione’s face (or what we’re told is Mangione’s face) had been broadcast on just about every TV news broadcast of the week prior after the murder of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO Brian Thompson.

Thompson’s murder in Manhattan on Dec. 4 was captured by security cameras but whoever shot the healthcare CEO concealed their face during the crime. Someone who appears to look like Mangione was captured on a different day on a hostel’s security camera but police have yet to present evidence definitively linking Mangione to the killing.

Thomas Dickey, Mangione’s lawyer in Pennsylvania, told ABC News that police officers who arrested the suspect didn’t even have the proper legal justification to take him into custody. According to the Independent, Dickey is arguing that Mangione was actually free to go when he was stopped and every piece of evidence obtained, including a so-called “manifesto,” was the “fruit of an illegal stop, seizure, detention, and/or arrest,”

Dickey is not handling the New York and federal charges against Mangione but is defending him against lesser charges from the initial arrest. Mangione faces charges in Pennsylvania for having an unlicensed firearm, forgery, and giving false identification for allegedly having a fake ID. But if the court finds Mangione’s arrest wasn’t proper in that jurisdiction, that could indeed have ramifications for the other charges outside Pennsylvania.

As ABC News notes, Mangione was reportedly given a snack in an effort to get his DNA, but details about that incident aren’t provided. Mangione became both an internet meme and a folk hero for allegedly killing the CEO, with many people expressing outrage over the U.S. healthcare system in the wake of the murder. But Mangione has never said he was the one behind the killing. That hasn’t stopped people from holding him up as a symbol of America’s broken system for delivering healthcare. Many people are even reportedly writing to him in prison.

Mangione could be eligible for the death penalty if he’s found guilty of the federal murder charges. New York state has also charged him with terrorism, though it’s not clear how that charge could possibly stick. Then again, we’re now learning thanks to the Trump administration that laws are completely fake. And you don’t even have to follow court orders as long as you’re the ones in power.