NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) — The police officer overseeing the Pennsylvania arrest of Luigi Mangione testified that his officers did not need a warrant to search a backpack that allegedly ties him to the murder of a UnitedHealth Group Inc. executive.
Lt. William Hanelly of the Altoona Police Department said Thursday that officers properly arrested Mangione and searched his bag at a McDonald’s on Dec. 9, 2024. Customers at the restaurant recognized him as the suspect in the shooting of Brian Thompson five days earlier.
Hanelly is a central witness at a pre-trial hearing in New York state court, where Mangione is charged with murder. His lawyers want a judge to rule that Altoona police illegally searched his bag and questioned him before his arrest.
They’ve asked a judge to suppress evidence from the bag, including a 9-millimeter gun, a silencer, a loaded gun magazine, a diary and other evidence that authorities say ties Mangione to the shooting.
Hanelly’s testimony buttressed arguments by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office that the search was proper. Hanelly said that while he didn’t order Officer Christy Wasser to search the bag, he watched her and “she had every right do so” under Pennsylvania law.
“It’s a warrant exception in Pennsylvania,” Hanelly said on the sixth day of the hearing. “Police can search the person and their items.”
Hanelly, a 14-year veteran, said that in thousands of arrests he’s conducted or observed, officers never sought a warrant to search a bag.
Since last week, Judge Gregory Carro has allowed prosecutors to play many hours of video footage taken from cameras worn by officers and depicting the arrest and search. On one video, two senior officers said they needed a warrant to continue searching Mangione’s bag.
But Hanelly said he outranked them and oversaw the 13 officers when Mangione was arrested after giving a phony driver’s license to police. He was charged in Altoona with forgery, possession of a gun without a license and giving police a false ID.
After Wasser found the gun magazine, Hanelly testified, he decided it was better to finish the search elsewhere.
“I told them to repack the backpack, and take it back to the station, where there would be less chance of cross-contamination,” he said. At the McDonald’s, he said, “we were in the public eye” and that “it was going to be a thing, a mess” in which patrons could observe them.
Hanelly, the third officer to arrive at the McDonald’s, said he called dispatchers at the New York Police Department, which had put out a series of pictures of Mangione as the prime suspect.
‘Excuse Me?’
“We might have the shooter,” Hanelly said in his initial call. “Excuse me? The shooter?,” the operator said. After explaining he was in Altoona, Hanelly said: “He matches the photos that your department put out.”
Over the next few hours, Hanelly and NYPD officers exchanged about two dozens calls. Mangione was moved days later to New York, where he faces state and federal murder charges. He’s pleaded not guilty in all three cases.
Just before testimony began Thursday, Mangione’s lawyer Karen Friedman Agnifilo complained that prosecutors had released a two-hour video showing Thompson’s killing and efforts to revive him. She said footage from the video had been viewed 1 million times on the TMZ news outlet.
“The only plausible reason for releasing it now,” she said “is to influence public perception and materially prejudice Mr. Mangione.”
Carro said the video was not part of the evidence he’s been asked to consider.
“I don’t really see a problem with what has been released,” Carro said.
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