Passenger arrested after trying to divert flight in Mexico to United States
AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images via Getty Images
(TIJUANA, MEXICO) — A 31-year-old man was arrested for allegedly trying to hijack a Mexican domestic commercial flight and reroute the aircraft to the U.S. Sunday morning, according to Mexican authorities and the airline, Volaris.
At some point after the flight took off this morning from León traveling to Tijuana, the Mexican man — identified by authorities only as Mario N — attacked a flight attendant and tried to storm the cockpit.
The plane was diverted to Guadalajara, where the Mexican National Guard arrested him.
It’s unclear the exact motive, but Mexico’s federal Department of Security said that airline personnel reported the man said that a close relative had been kidnapped and shortly before takeoff he received a death threat if he traveled to Tijuana.
The man was traveling with his wife and two children, Mexican authorities said.
Once the suspect was arrested in Guadalajara, the plane continued on to Tijuana without incident.
(NEW YORK) — The suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson plans to challenge his extradition from Pennsylvania to New York, where he faces a charge of second-degree murder in connection with last week’s high-profile fatal shooting.
The suspect, Luigi Mangione, 26, was arrested on Monday and charged in Pennsylvania for allegedly possessing an untraceable “ghost” gun.”
“He has constitutional rights and that’s what he’s doing” in challenging the interstate transfer, his attorney, Thomas Dickey, told reporters in Pennsylvania.
He also plans to plead not guilty to the charges filed against him in Blair County, Pennsylvania, Dickey said. A Pennsylvania judge ordered Mangione, 26, held without bail on Tuesday.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said it will seek a governor’s warrant to try to force Mangione’s extradition. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement that she’ll sign a request for the governor’s warrant “to ensure this individual is tried and held accountable.”
Dickey said he anticipates that Mangione would plead not guilty to the second-degree murder charge in New York.
The attorney said he has limited information about the facts of the New York murder case but he conceded Mangione is “accused of some serious matters.” He added that Mangione is “taking it as well as he can.”
Mangione’s defense was on Tuesday given 14 days to file a formal challenge to the extradition. The suspect was shackled at the waist and ankles during the hearing at Blair County Court House in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania.
The judge ordered Mangione held without bail, returning him to the State Correctional Institution in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, where he’s listed as inmate QQ7787.
ABC News’ Peter Charalambous and Josh Margolin contributed to this report.
As Luigi Mangione pleaded not guilty to murder charges in Manhattan Criminal Court this morning, protesters from all walks of life assembled outside the courthouse to show their support for the alleged killer.
While their reasons to bear the 11-degree weather varied — including personal healthcare issues, concerns about inequality and distrust of the media — they were seemingly united in their support for the 26-year-old whose alleged actions have ignited a nationwide conversation about healthcare.
Pushing her 1-year-old son, Emmanuel, in a stroller, 37-year-old Alicia Thomas from the South Bronx said her experience giving birth while on Medicaid helped her relate to Mangione’s grievances with the healthcare industry. Suffering from a postpartum hemorrhage, she said she wanted to spend more than two days in the hospital after giving birth but couldn’t afford care beyond what Medicaid provided.
Thomas said she believes Mangione is innocent — framing him as a victim of the healthcare industry and justice system — but said his case has brought light to the need to improve healthcare.
“It sparked a catalyst to think about what kind of world we are going to leave our children,” she said, showing a Justo Juez prayer candle she plans to light for Mangione. “Our generation has seen so much devastation throughout the years, and our children are going to suffer at the hands of corporate greed.”
Prosecutors allege that Mangione meticulously planned and carried out the murder of Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel on the morning of Dec. 4 before fleeing the state to Pennsylvania, where he was arrested days later at a McDonald’s. According to the federal complaint, Mangione was in possession of a notebook in which he expressed hostility to healthcare executives, described the insurance industry as his target because it “checks every box,” and laid out his intent to “whack” Thompson at UnitedHealthcare’s investors conference.
While Mangione did not have family in court on Monday, about two dozen women attended the arraignment in the public section of the gallery, many of them voicing support for Mangione.
“This is a grave injustice, and that’s why people are here,” one of the women, who said she arrived at the courthouse at 5 a.m., told ABC News.
Outside court, protestors rallied for Mangione, chanting “Eat the rich,” “Hey, hey, ho, ho, these CEOs have got to go,” and “Free, free Luigi.”
Nicholas Zamudio, 33, said he came to the protest after spending over $100,000 out of pocket for his treatment after an electric injury in 2021. Holding a sign that read “United States Healthcare Stole My Livelihood. Prosecute Malicious Profiteers,” Zamudio said he doesn’t know if he will be able to afford his ongoing treatment for nerve damage.
“I don’t have insurance, I’ve drained my 401K. I’ve drained everything that I have, and come January I will be trying to keep a roof over my head by couch hopping amongst friends. I’ve lost everything and that’s what brought me out here,” he said.
Zamudio said he found comfort in Mangione’s writings about his spinal injury, noting they both received similar spinal fusion operations.
“He talked about not being able to sleep, laying in pain, things like that,” he said. “I guess a lot kind of resonated with me in regards to the pain and not getting help with the healthcare system. I think murder is obviously wrong, but it did bring us to a point we needed to get to.”
Law enforcement has raised concerns about the outpouring of support for Mangione and hostility towards healthcare industry since Thompson’s killing, with multiple police bulletins warning about the increased risk to healthcare executives. UnitedHealth Group’s CEO Andrew Witty appeared to acknowledge the public sentiment, writing in an opinion essay in the New York Times earlier this month that he “understand people’s frustrations” with healthcare and vowed to “to find ways to deliver high-quality care and lower costs.”
“[W]e also are struggling to make sense of this unconscionable act and the vitriol that has been directed at our colleagues who have been barraged by threats. No employees — be they the people who answer customer calls or nurses who visit patients in their homes — should have to fear for their and their loved ones’ safety,” Witty wrote.
While the specifics of Mangione’s grievances with the healthcare injury remain unclear — and we do not know if his personal issues with the healthcare system motivated his alleged actions — many of the protesters came to their own conclusions about what motivated the alleged killer.
A 26-year-old woman from Queens who preferred to go unnamed said she related to Mangione after she fell off her parent’s healthcare plan and couldn’t afford COBRA coverage. Having gone uninsured for months, she said she believes the healthcare system is broken based on her inability to find a good plan despite days of effort calling different insurance companies.
“I spent an entire month — 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. with three phones in front of me — waiting on the phone on hold to get access to these people. They put me through circles and circles and circles,” she said.
Another woman from Brooklyn said she came to court because she believed Mangione was bringing attention to the need for universal healthcare in the United States. She added that she didn’t trust the media coverage of Mangione’s case and wanted to see the proceedings with her own eyes to draw conclusions.
“There was a lot of support from where we were in the back [of court],” she said after attending the arraignment in person. “I believe it’s a conversation that a lot of people are having now, and whatever we can do to help progress this conversation is worthy of participating in.”
Bill Dobbs, who lives in Manhattan, said he was motivated to support Mangione after federal prosecutors charged the 26-year-old with a crime that carries the death penalty. He held a sign that read “Justice not Vengeance.”
“It’s very alarming there could be a death penalty,” he said. “Punishment has got to leave a chance for change, and the death penalty doesn’t.”
Mangione’s disdain for the healthcare industry only added to his reasons to support the alleged killer, Dobbs said.
“What’s going on in the private healthcare industry is scandalous,” he said.
While most of the protestors said they believed Mangione was innocent, their support for Mangione carried an implicit incongruence — Is Mangione an innocent victim or a martyr for confronting the healthcare industry through his alleged actions? Many protestors who spoke with ABC News reconciled the beliefs by referencing the plague of mass shootings impacting the United States, claiming that the attention on Mangione and terrorism label is evidence of a broken justice system.
“He’s an alleged shooter, but how many school shooters are labeled with terrorism. How many?” asked one protestor.
Booking photo of Luigi Mangione after he was arrested by police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Dec. 9, 2024. (PA Dept. of Corrections)
(NEW YORK) — As Luigi Mangione was handcuffed and placed under arrest in Pennsylvania on Monday, police searched the backpack he’d been carrying and found what they described as a loaded 3D-printed firearm, a suppressor and a single loose bullet.
“Officers located a black 3D-printed pistol and a black silencer,” wrote Tyler Frye and Joseph Detwiler, members of the Altoona Police Department, in a criminal complaint. They described the weapon as having “a metal slide and a plastic handle with a metal threaded barrel.”
“The pistol had one loaded Glock magazine with six nine-millimeter full metal jacket rounds. There was also one loose nine-millimeter hollow point round,” the officers wrote. “The silencer was also 3D printed.”
Mangione, whom New York officials charged with second-degree murder in connection with last week’s “brazen” killing of a CEO in Manhattan, was first arrested in Altoona on Monday on charges that included a felony related to the gun, according to the criminal complaint.
Mangione faces a third-degree felony charge for allegedly carrying a concealed firearm without a license, according to the complaint. He also faces a misdemeanor charge for allegedly “possessing instruments of crime,” along with three additional Pennsylvania charges related to allegedly lying to police about his identity.
The weapon will now undergo ballistic testing, New York Police Department Chief Joseph Kenny said on Monday. He said information about the weapon had begun coming in from Altoona police and that it appeared to be a “ghost gun,” meaning it had no serial number and was untraceable.
“May have been made on a 3D printer, with the capability of firing a 9 mm round,” Kenny said. “Obviously that will come out during our ballistics testing.”
Kenny said it was too early in the investigation to detail whether the gun could have been made by the suspect or purchased. But the gun and 3D-printed suppressor were “consistent with the weapon used in the murder,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said following Mangione’s arrest on Monday.
Law enforcement had looked closely last week at what weapon may have been used in the killing, officials said, as the gun’s operation appeared to be somewhat unique in its operation.
Detectives had studied a surveillance video that showed the fatal shooting, saying it appeared to show “that the gun malfunctions, as he clears the jam and begins to fire again,” Kenny had said last week.
Police sources told ABC News on Thursday that those apparent malfunctions may point to the weapons being a B&T Station Six, a type of pistol with an integrated silencer that’s known in Great Britain as a Welrod pistol.
Such firearms have long barrels that enables them to fire 9 mm bullets with a nearly silent shot, officials said. They also require manually cycling ammunition from the magazine.
But New York Mayor Eric Adams said untraceable weapons were “extremely dangerous,” adding that there needed to be a federal “clamp down on the availability of ghost guns.”
ABC New’s Aaron Katersky, Peter Charalambous, Mark Crudele and Josh Margolin contributed to this report.
