UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot on a Midtown Manhattan sidewalk early Wednesday morning in what police called a premeditated ambush that sent them on a manhunt for the unidentified gunman, who fled the area on a bicycle and was last seen heading into Central Park.
The health insurance executive from Minnesota was walking outside the New York Hilton Midtown at about 6.40 am, before an investors conference his company was holding in the hotel, when a gunman wearing a hood and a mask fired off several rounds from a pistol. Thompson had been staying in another hotel across the street.
He was killed in one of the busiest parts of the city, an area teeming with tourists as well as people in business suits. Even as New Yorkers prepared for a bustling Christmas season with the traditional tree lighting Wednesday night at Rockefeller Center, officers had cordoned off sections of 54th Street outside the Hilton with yellow crime scene tape and were counting 9mm casings on the ground.
Police tracked the gunman’s movements in a neighbourhood saturated by city-operated and private surveillance cameras, releasing images of him making a cash purchase at a nearby Starbucks and then, a short time later, taking aim at Thompson, who authorities said was shot in the back and leg.
Exclusive footage obtained by The Post appears to show the suspect exiting the 57th Street F train station timestamped at 6.50 am The individual - wearing clothing, shoes and a backpack that match images released by the NYPD - leaves the station and walks briskly down Sixth Avenue toward the Hilton Hotel, where police say they responded to a call of a person being shot at 6:46 a.m.
The Starbucks where police released photo of the suspect is located around 100 feet south of the F subway exit. These pictures released from the Starbucks were the clearest of his partially concealed face to be made public Wednesday. By late afternoon, the NYPD had received tips and was following potential leads.
Detectives traced the gunman’s entrance into the 843-acre park via Central Park South, and they determined that he exited on the west side. It was not clear if he left the bike in the park or if he abandoned it elsewhere.
The targeted shooting of the CEO of an American company, in the nation’s financial capital, shocked the health and business communities nationally and in Minnetonka, Minnesota, outside Minneapolis, where UnitedHealth Group is headquartered. Police said they were searching for a motive.
New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a news conference that the shooting was a “brazen, targeted attack” and that the shooter had been “lying in wait for several minutes” before Thompson approached the hotel.
“This does not appear to be a random act of violence. … Many people passed the suspect, but he appeared to wait for his intended target,” Tisch added.
New York Police Department investigators were looking into whether anyone had a known grudge against the victim. Police said they were combing social media and speaking to witnesses in an effort to track down anyone who may have knowledge of why Thompson was killed, offering a $10 000 (R181 6849) reward for information that leads to an arrest and prosecution. They said they also were looking into the possibility that the shooter had been hired to kill the executive.
Thompson, a 50-year-old Iowa native, joined UnitedHealth Group in 2004 and rose through a series of top leadership posts to become the CEO of its largest unit, the health insurance firm UnitedHealthcare.
The company is a dominating presence in American health care, providing employer and individual health coverage to about 50 million Americans. UnitedHealthcare brought in $281 billion last year, accounting for about 75% of its parent company’s revenue; had it been a stand-alone firm, it would have ranked among the top 10 publicly traded American companies by sales, according to data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence.
In addition to being CEO of UnitedHealth Group’s health insurance unit, Thompson was also a top executive of the parent company, though he was not its public face. He typically played a role supporting UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty in calls with financial analysts. Witty was presenting to analysts Wednesday when he cut the event short.
“I’m afraid that, as some of you may know, we’re dealing with a very serious medical situation with one of our team members,” he said. “We were going to go offline now from the broadcast.”
Hours later, the company released a statement confirming Thompson’s death. “We are deeply saddened and shocked at the passing of our dear friend and colleague Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. Brian was a highly respected colleague and friend to all who worked with him,” the company said. It said it was “working closely” with the NYPD. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) issued a statement, saying, “This is horrifying news and a terrible loss for the business and health care community in Minnesota.”
UnitedHealth disclosed last month that the analyst event would take place on December 4 in New York at 8 am but didn’t publicly share the location.
Police said that the shooter may have dropped a mobile device nearby and that investigators were running forensic tests on it. Authorities said earlier Wednesday that he took off on a bicycle from Citi Bike, the local bike-share provider. A spokesperson for Lyft, which operates Citi Bike, said the company would assist authorities in the effort to identify and track down the gunman. But a source familiar with the focus on the bike said later Wednesday that police had determined the shooter used a different bicycle, not a Citi Bike.
The Hilton hotel lobby bustled with guests Wednesday morning as Christmas music played inside. Guests seemed to carry on normally, lugging their suitcases, buying coffee and working on their laptops. Outside, a cluster of police officers stood next to a large white NYPD van that said “Crime Scene Unit.”
Officials said that the Rockefeller Center tree lighting would proceed as planned and that the area would be secured by the typical increased police presence that the NYPD deploys for major events.
At a news conference, NYPD officials said Thompson did not have a security detail with him when he was shot. Paulette Thompson, his wife, told NBC News that he had been the subject of threats, saying: “I don’t know details. I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him.”
Police were looking into the possibility of threats but did not say if there had been any, noting that the investigation was in its early stages.
UnitedHealth didn’t respond to questions about threats and Thompson’s security Wednesday.
UnitedHealth’s aggressive growth across the health-care sector has drawn criticism in recent years from lawmakers who say it has contributed to higher costs for consumers. And there was national outrage earlier this year when a subsidiary, Change Healthcare, was hacked, compromising the health records of an estimated 100 million Americans.
Many large corporations pay for personal security services for senior executives, particularly when they are in the public eye. Moderna, maker of one of the most widely used coronavirus vaccines, spent $1 million on the security of its CEO, Stéphane Bancel, in 2023, while the other major coronavirus vaccine maker, Pfizer, spent about $800000 on security for its CEO, Albert Bourla, the companies disclosed in regulatory filings.
UnitedHealth Group said that Witty, its CEO, is required to use a company plane for all business travel and is encouraged to do so for personal travel. It did not disclose the cost of any perquisite for security in its most recent filing on executive compensation.
Dale Buckner, the CEO of security firm Global Guardian, said targeted killings of corporate executives are exceedingly rare. Still, he did not find it shocking, saying it reflects the risks of a world where it is possible to track an executive with information online. In the hours after news of the shooting broke, he said, his firm received 47 requests for armed agents for corporate leaders in the United States and internationally, in what he called “an enormous surge.”
Police in Maple Grove, Minnesota, the suburban city where Thompson lived, said it had a record of only one suspicious incident at the Thompson household. In that case, from 2018, Paulette Thompson called police after she thought someone might be trying to get into the house. In the police report of the incident, Paulette Thompson said that the house had an alarm system that was inactive.
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