Summary
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot in a targeted attack outside a New York Hilton hotel, with investigators describing the killing as meticulously planned.
The gunman fled on foot, then by rental bike, and possibly left the city via bus. Shell casings at the scene had words like “deny” and “defend” inscribed, hinting at a motive linked to Thompson’s work.
Experts suggest the shooter may have military or weapons experience but left key clues, including surveillance footage and discarded items.
Police are analyzing evidence, including DNA, to identify the suspect.
“We are not incredibly incompetent. The shooter was very smart” - overfunded police ranking as a top military force
They’re just anxious to get back to the real problem, domesticated squirrels.
Further proof that if you’re smart enough you can usually get away with it, and a reminder that cops are only effective because must criminals are fucking stupid.
Well yeah. The real criminal is dead. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Most murders aren’t premeditated killing of what is basically a stranger.
If you’re not on the scene when the police arrive, not a family member, not somebody with a known grudge and not a rival gang member, don’t brag about the killing to your friends, and don’t visibly flee the scene in your own car, then they’re reduced to the CSI stuff, which I’ll wager is far less effective than it is on the show.
And also don’t give your DNA to 23 and Me.
Just ask his sister Maggie where he bought his bunker with his Donnie Darko money… Nobody? Not one fucking mention he looks exactly like him??
I mean, it certainly was the first thing that popped to mind. But no, I didn’t mention it.
Omg ty!
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How about these fucking class traitors use their resources to catch the murderers of decent everyday people instead
Why don’t you call the tip line and ask them yourselves? Your son could be shot in the face in broad daylight and they were just move on the next day. They would never look for your son’s murderer.
Why are they protecting the ultra wealthy more than they are protecting the working class??
Maybe the police are not here to protect us after all?
Ok like the police suck but they would absolutely look for a murderer in that instance. No reason to exaggerate when they’re bad enough
I played a cop in a video game once and know that they investigate murders of poor/homeless people.
So happy for you
i doubt the effort would be actually equal. dont know about ny, but where im from, the double standard is blatant
There are three kinds of people in this world. Those who benefit from the system, those who are exploited by the system, and those who deluded themselves into thinking the system benefits them.
What about the people who delude themselves that they are not beneficiaries of the system?
Oh no. What if they never find him? What if this poor, sweet, humble, *checks notes* absolute monster of a healthcare CEO never gets justice.
Narrator: but he already got justice.
Narrator: but he already got justice.
If he planned this much and they don’t know his names homie is long gone by now
Those discarded items might not even have his DNA on them. Everyone knows about DNA evidence nowadays, if he’s really on the ball it’d be easy enough to pick up some random decoys.
Doesn’t it also require the DNA to be stored on file to be matched? They haven’t even got a suspect to get DNA from.
No, they could pinpoint you just by dna of relatives. Hence why the whole 23andme is such a terrible idea.
If those were his items, and his dna on those items, sure. Iirc, this is how they got the BTK killer- a familial match.
Not BTK, Golden State Killer.
They can’t pinpoint you. DNA is about as terrible as fingerprints and lie detectors. They’re all full of false positives.
Sure its not perfect but if they can narrow it down from a few million people to just a few 100/1000’s that makes fibding someone much easier .
Nah, this tech isn’t useful to prove you’re a suspect. Its only use is to prove that someone is not a suspect
They got his face on camera… maybe. Assuming it’s the same smiling guy and with a partial DNA match, I’d think that’s enough to get a court order to get a blood sample to get a better DNA match.
Of course that’s assuming the smiling guy is the same guy AND one of his relatives did 23andme AND they can find and arrest him.
Well, I’ll be damned! The republicans were right!
All it takes is a good-guy with a gun!
It takes a bit more than that to get away with it though. The police even seem impressed.
If failing to close a murder file impressed the police they’d be in a constant state of amazement. About half of homicides are solved and I’m sure premeditated murder outside of family is much much lower than that. 5 to 10 percent for organized crime/gangs for example.
Yeah, but this is one they want to solve. They don’t care if a random person gets shot in the Bronx.
I bet plenty of non millionaires would be willing to shelter and hide him. 🤷♂️
I wish people would stop posting his photo. This is just helping the police to find him. I’m downvoting all posts with his face.
I’m sure that if people stop posting the photo the police are going to forget that they have a photo of his face…
I am going to assume you are high or were under the influence of something when you posted this.
You’re meaning to tell me that you think that somehow just the police having a photo is enough to catch the guy? You don’t think they need the help of other people for tips in finding him? Kindly explain the reward then…
Why make their job any easier than it needs to be?
Explain a $10k reward that is being advertised with the picture that you’re trying to say shouldn’t be posted? Stop being ridiculous. Are you being serious? You’re just trolling right?
You’re considering that these photos are his photos, when actually it could easily be an entirely other person or, worse, AI-generated person (sites such as This Person Doesn’t Exist is a clear example of how AIs can generate non-existent faces). IIRC, these photos came from news outlets, so it couldn’t really be trusted as a matter of fact.
Despite that, people here on Lemmy seem to be sharing it just for the lulz of it, because meaningful things need a meaning symbol to symbolize it. And those photos, even when they’re not his, is a well-agreed symbol.
If those photos really helped the authorities somehow, they’d already have a grip on him, but they haven’t. So, hey, relax…
You know the rich are shitting their pants over this. It’s gotta be like a David and Goliath thing for them. It’d be a great time to start a private security company.
I’m sure Academie (or whatever they’re calling Blackwater these days) and the Pinkertons are about to see a lot of new business.
Every time I am reminded that the Pinkertons still exist, I go replay a couple parts of Red Dead Redemption 2…
I mean yes, but also these execs are more than rich enough to just have a 24/7 guard detail on retainer. They’ll be mildly inconvenienced by that tho so bets are they’ll step back and put a pazzi as the face of their companies.
Elon was building droids to replace workers, but now they are going to have to use them to protect Elon.
Someone will find a way to hack the droid and turn it on the ‘protected’ individual.
Hopefully the hacker waits until the droids develop a good name for themselves and all the CEOs have one. Then flip them all at once iRobot style.
It’s gotta be like a David and Goliath thing for them.
This is the bad timeline though. I’m just waiting to hear that this guy was a pro hired by a C-suite rival. Not some hero of the commons.
That would be kind of a bummer. Still a gain for society
I doubt it would be a gain if someone, who hired someone to kill this guy, would become the next CEO.
There is going to be another either way
Good being done for bad reasons is still good
Good being done for bad reasons is still good
What about bad being done for good reasons? Still bad? (hint: murder)
Cool motive still murder
Idk, the implication it seems your making is that this murder was bad, but I’d argue the result is pretty good here regardless of intentions (though their intentions seem pretty clear given the bullet casings)
No that one’s fine actually
As much as I would totally hate to see the average board room turned into a kindergarten classroom: Not gonna happen. Just expect to see more stories about security guards “roughing people up” and more cops told to bring a spare piece and a dime bag to the site of a self defense shooting when one of the roid fiends unloads on someone for looking at them funny.
It’ll fade. Unless…
It happens every three months or so. With escalating difficulty. All they way to being found dead alone in their office. Then slow down to every 18 to 36 months. That’s when they’d be scared enough to actually change corporate policies.
As someone once said: We only have to get lucky once. You have to be lucky every day of your life.
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but something like a bomb in the boardroom,
…also risks killing innocent people in adjacent parts of the building.
The janitor and the guys fixing the elevator don’t need to become collateral damage.
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After writing my comment, I thought of mass shooters tweaking their tactic, and going to different kinds of locations. Like certain board rooms.
It’s going to be harder after Wednesday. I’m certain Sodexo, ABM, Cintas, etc are going to scrutinize all the support staff working at every F500 from now on, since that’s ideally the closest working class staff to any C-level.
And these C-levels are all gonna get private, armed security baked into their comp packages now - the guys who are actually competent, not John With His Dad’s Revolver.
I don’t want to be a downer, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_deed has a long history of doing that and so far it kind of culminated in world war 1.
Certainly the assassination of Ferdinand is a proximate cause of WWI, but there were much greater forces in play. The great powers had giant mechanized armies for the first time, they had plans for the deployment of millions on very strict deadlines, and they had the belief that failure to meet those deadlines would mean national destruction.
I think it is more plausible to argue that propaganda of the deed helped to end the gilded age and usher in the New Deal era, which was America’s golden era.
I also act under political desperation. Only under the most optimistic assumptions will electoralism be able to save us from climate change; currently the most likely outcome is human extinction. If the propaganda of the deed has only a 5% chance of saving us from our modern gilded age and the resultant climate-induced end of civilization, then I say it is a chance we must take for we are running out of serious options.
Politicians in particular should be rethinking about how much they really want to be complete shitheads in public. Perhaps turn down the glee when they enact harmful legislation as well.
I wonder who was next in line to be CEO at that outfit? Seems like a great setup to use a hired, trained hit man along with some inscribed bullets to make it seem like a political asassination. In other words, if maybe this wasn’t revenge: who all would benefit from this CEO’s demise?
It is wild that he was there minutes before CEO walked by, considering the meeting was later and CEO went early. Makes it sound like a more sophisticated operation.
If this was a conspiracy to benefit someone to become the next CEO, their shot certainly backfired. The next CEO will be under a massive public scrutiny and if UHC’s policies don’t change, he/she will certainly be the next target.
Actually, the shot backfired twice: every CEO is now under public scrutiny, as The Adjuster became a powerful symbol of the awakened feeling of “that’s enough” inside everyone who can see the corporation greed.
As a non-American citizen (Brazilian), I hope this feeling of “that’s enough” could spread beyond US territory, especially towards the southern hemisphere, where the political lobby, bribery and corporate greed is strong and possibly worst than in US. Perhaps it’d bring the fear from people unto politicians and corporations, which will be left with two choices: be changed or be (literally) deposed.
Oh shit! We calling him “the adjuster” now!?
Damn straight we are. He’s a national hero.
If this was a conspiracy to benefit someone to become the next CEO, their shot certainly backfired. The next CEO will be under a massive public scrutiny and if UHC’s policies don’t change, he/she will certainly be the next target.
Actually, the shot backfired twice: every CEO is now under public scrutiny, as The Adjuster became a powerful symbol of the awakened feeling of “that’s enough” inside everyone who can see the corporation greed.
Ah, so you are an optimist. What changes to health insurance/health care do you believe will occur in the next year due to this? I believe in 2 weeks people will be bored and worried about something else, but I’d be curious to know what you foresee.
in 2 weeks people will be bored and worried about something else
No fucking way. Because the insurance companies won’t let them!
For fucking decades from now whenever someone gets screwed over by a health insurance company (which happens to probably hundreds of thousands every day) they’re going to think of this situation.
The killer has proven there’s an effective means for even poor people to institute change!
But what outcomes will be different? If the new CEOs sweat a bit and continue denying claims at the new rate, what’s the difference? What actual impact to the people that pay health insurance will occur?
Optimistic, me? Lol! I’m far from an optimistic person.
On the one hand, you’re right, humans easily forget things, especially when our daily lives are so exhausting and humans have limited attention span (it reminds me of a video about an experiment involving attention span where a person wearing a monkey costume appears during a moment where the viewers are trying to count how many times a basketball kicked on the ground: as our eyes are focused on the basketball, we can’t even notice them).
On the other hand, I never saw this kind of broad and unified reaction and feelings of “justice had been made”. Hell, it even caused a reaction inside myself, and I’m not even an American. I’m Brazilian but I’m following what’s happening around the world, especially what’s happening with USA. I notice how the world has long been a gunpowder barrel, ready to explode. The bad things kept happening, humans kept being enslaved by this modern slavery, humans kept being silenced (“shut up and work, get us our profits, peasant!”), and everything has a tipping point. Everything has an “enough” point. A broad “enough” reaction was just a matter of time. And it seems like it happened through an anonymous symbol of this “enough” sentiment inside everyone.
At least that’s what I feel, even when I’m from a whole another country and hemisphere, because it’s a system with tentacles over the whole world. Corporations are multinational, they got branches here and there and everywhere. For example: back in 2015 and 2019, hundreds of Brazilians were killed by a mining corporation, when a dam broke, flooded an entire town and drowned people to their deaths. If was known as “Brumadinho dam disaster” and “Mariana dam disaster”. It took years for their families to receive money (I’m not sure if this happened yet, when or how much they received), and some people even weren’t found. People were “indirectly” murdered by a mining corporation, and that mining corporation continued to operate until nowadays!!
Something definitely needs to change, something definitely needs to happen so our “that’s enough” feelings can be awakened, so things can change even if it’s a little bit.
It’d be the cherry on top if he left evidence that linked other health insurance CEOs.
And here I was, thinking it was sheer coincidence and good luck. I guess that’s why I’m not “an expert”.
Let’s see here. It’s currently the 7th. I wonder what other things happened in NY that need attention. Everyday is indeed a busy day.
I’ll just leave this here.
https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/reports-analysis/homicide.page
Statistically, there should have been at least one more murder in the city since then. Looking at victim demographics in that chart and it’s pretty obvious why this is getting so much attention…it’s very uncommon for a white, non-hispanic person to get murdered in the city.
