Hunt for UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s killer begins ‘close to home’: live

UnitedHealthcare has disabled social media comments on its profiles after disgruntled patients began flooding the company with complaints following the assassination of its CEO.

The health insurer has been deluged by comments, many from people who say their or their loved ones claims have been denied. Its most recent Instagram posts announcing the death of Thompson let users like or share the post, but not comment on it.

A former FBI chief has revealed he does not believe that Brian Thompson’s assassin was a hitman but he was clearly a ‘proficient’ marksman.

Robert D’Amico said the UnitedHeathcare CEO’s killer made some crucial errors which mark him out as an amateur, including a visiting a nearby Starbucks prior to the slaying.

Police said Thursday they found a water bottle and protein bar wrapper from a trash can near the scene of the ambush and think the suspect bought them from a Starbucks minutes before the shooting. The items were being tested by the city’s medical examiner.

UnitedHealthcare and several of its competitoirs have erased the leadership pages from their websites.

UnitedHealthcare’s About Us page has been redirecting to the homepage since Thursday, 404 Media reported.

The page used to take users to Thompson’s bio alongside bios for each of its top executives.

Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield and Medica have also removed their About Us pages.

A balloon with a sign taped to it reading ‘CEO DOWN’ over the image of a smiling star and party poppers was found outside the Hilton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan after Thompson, 50, was gunned down there Wednesday morning.

The NYPD said late on Thursday afternoon that it scoured a Long Island Rail Road train the day prior after receiving a tip that Brian Thompson’s assassin was on board.

The tip turned out to be a dead-end, however law enforcement officials urged the public to continue offering tips to aid their ongoing manhunt.

A police spokesperson said: ‘The train stopped. They searched the train and nothing was found.’

Taylor Lorenz has doubled down on her unsympathetic comments she made about the death of UnitedHeath’s CEO, but clarified that she does not condone murder.

Lorenz has since defended her sentiment in an interview with TMZ amid the backlash, telling critics it’s important to consider context.

Thompson was the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, the insurance wing of parent company UnitedHealth Group Inc.

He had worked at the Minnetonka, Minnesota-based company for two decades and led its insurance division since 2021. He was one of the company’s highest-paid executives, with a $10.2 million annual compensation package.

Thompson kept a low profile, with UnitedHealth Group Inc.’s CEO Andrew Witty taking on a more public-facing role that included testifying before Congress.

Thompson started his career as a certified public accountant and graduated from the University of Iowa. He lived in the Minneapolis suburb of Maple Grove and was the married father of two sons in high school.

The words scrawled on the bullets used to kill UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson closely resemble the title of a book criticizing insurance companies and the tactics they use to deny claims, it has been revealed.

Curiously, the messages bear similarity to the title of a 2010 book on ‘why insurance companies don’t pay claims and what you can do about it’, called ‘Delay, Deny, Defend’.

Critics allege the tactic is used by insurance companies to ‘ensure your claim is either never paid or paid at a rate far below what you deserve’.

Last year the DoJ launched a probe into whether the private company of the nation’s biggest insurer, led by Thompson, was unfairly restricting competitors and running a monopoly.

In May, the City of Hollywood Firefighters’ Pension Fund initiated a complaint against Thompson and other executives, accusing the CEO of failing to tell investors about the federal probe before he unloaded over 31 percent of his stock, taking in $15.1 million in proceeds.

In legal documents, the fund said Thompson and other company execs sold over $117 million worth of UnitedHealth common stock during the four-month period when insiders knew about the federal antitrust investigation but the public did not.

Thompson had an in-house security team assigned to him for his stay in Manhattan, but they were not with him when he was shot dead as he walked to the company’s annual investor conference at a Hilton hotel in Midtown, a source told CNN.

It’s the norm for major health care companies to assign personal security to their top executives.

The unidentified killer rode a bus from Atlanta to New York City 10 days before he shot Thompson dead, arriving in Manhattan on November 24, according to CNN.

He reportedly spent his days bouncing around the city, and even visited the Hilton hotel days before the killing.

The suspect used a fake ID from New Jersey to check into a hostel in the Upper West Side. He paid in cash.

He checked out of the hostel on November 29 before checking back in on November 30.

The assassination of UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson has triggered tasteless celebrations and bad taste support for the gunman who killed him.

Thompson was shot outside the Hilton Hotel in Manhattan on Wednesday morning by a masked assassin, who remains on the run and whose motive has not been disclosed.

As news of the cold-blooded killing spread, thousands declared they were happy at news of the horrific killing of the 50 year-old father of two and even cooed over the murderer’s apparent good looks.

Thompson purchased the $1million home near his family home in 2018, according to public records, with neighbors telling the Journal that he spent much of his time traveling.

A hostel clerk had a brief flirty moment with the suspected shooter of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson which handed authorities bombshell evidence by getting a better look at the assailant.

The staff member told CNN that she had asked the gunman to lower his mask while flirting with him as he checked into the HI New York City Hostel in Manhattan’s Upper West Side.