NYC manhunt underway after healthcare CEO was shot down in Midtown Manhattan in shocking targeted attack

The CEO of healthcare giant UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, 50, has been gunned down outside a Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan this morning. Police are saying the attack was not random and someone targeted Thompson specifically. The shooter is currently the subject of a citywide manhunt.

Thompson got to the hotel at around 6:46 a.m., according to local reports. The man fired off numerous shots before escaping down 6th Avenue. One of the bullets hit Thompson in the chest and he was pronounced dead shortly after at Mt Sinai Hospital.

Thompson was attending an Investor Day conference, per Andrew Witty, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare’s parent company UnitedHealth Group. Witty released a statement saying the conference was canceled due to a “a very serious medical situation” involving an employee. Thompson was scheduled to speak at the conference later today.

The suspect is described as a white male in a cream-colored jacket wearing a black face mask. He also wore white sneakers and carried a grey backpack. Witnesses to the shooting told the NY Post the suspect was just hanging around the area before the shooting and was not a guest of the hotel.

As soon as the suspect saw Thompson, he opened fire and hit him multiple times. After the shooting, the suspect ran through an alleyway known as the Ziegfeld and jumped on a bike to get away.

The area around the hotel was swarming with police cars after the attack, with vehicles lined up all down the street and a cordoned off area in front of the hotel.

Before Thompson was in his current job, he was the CEO of UnitedHealthcare’s government business programs, which include Medicare & Retirement as well as Community & State. Before that, he was a CPA at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.

The shooting was extremely strange and many people believe that the motive was personal. According to a Los Angeles Times op ed about the company, UnitedHealthcare took in $15 billion in profit in 2020 and notoriously reduced coverage for patients who needed them the most, leading many to theorize the shooter or his loved ones could have been affected by Thompson’s decisions.

Others put forth a different hypothesis: that Thompson was maybe connected to a scheme involving stocks when the Department of Justice was investigating the company.

Adding to the controversy is a lawsuit filed in 2023 which claims that the company used faulty AI to deny “elderly patients care owed to them under Medicare Advantage Plans.”

“The elderly are prematurely kicked out of care facilities nationwide or forced to deplete family savings to continue receiving necessary medical care, all because [UnitedHealth’s] AI model ‘disagrees’ with their real live doctors’ determinations,” the complaint said.

This is a developing story and the shooter is still on the run. Here’s hoping we get more updates soon.