The suspect is nervous as he’s frisked in a corner of a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. His hands shake.
There’s fibbing on both sides: The suspect says he’s a “homeless” guy named “Mark.” The cops say it’s just an ID check.
And through it all, surreally, Christmas carols play on the restaurant sound system — with one cop whistling along to keep things calm as they try to verify his identity.
Dramatic police bodycam video of Luigi Mangione, screened for the first time Tuesday in a New York City courtroom, shows the 28-year-old’s December arrest in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson as it has never been seen before.
“Stand up for us — put your hands on top of your head,” Altoona Police Officer Joseph Detwiler can be heard telling Mangione twice in the video, which is not being released to the public and could only be seen in court.
“You seem nervous right now,” the officer says next, as Mangione stands up and is patted down at 9:50 on a Monday morning — five days after Thompson’s murder on a midtown Manhattan sidewalk.
When the officer asks, “Why are you nervous?” Mangione, his hands atop his head, gives no answer.
“Sit down. Sit down,” the officer tells him.
The video was played for most of Tuesday morning and well into the afternoon — the second day of an evidence-suppression hearing in state court in Manhattan. It was narrated from the witness stand by Detwiler, who, with his partner, was the first officer on the scene.
As they rolled up to the McDonald’s in their patrol car, Detwiler was thinking the job would be a waste of time, he testified.
“I did not believe it was going to be the person that they said it was,” Detwiler said Tuesday, during questioning by the lead state prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann.
The 911 call had come in from a very skeptical restaurant manager. She’d called police reluctantly, according to Monday’s testimony, after customers insisted the guy sitting back by the men’s room — his face obscured by a hat and medical mask — looked like “the CEO shooter” in the news.
The dispatcher was skeptical too, listing the call as “Priority: Low.”
And on the way to the McDonald’s, Detwiler saw a text from his supervisor, Lt. Tom Hanley: “If you get the New York City shooter, I’ll buy you a hoagie.”
Detwiler kept the patrol car’s sirens silent as he and his partner, Patrolman Tyler Frye, rolled into the parking lot.
Once inside, the two approached Mangione’s table, interrupting a meal of a breakfast sandwich and a hash brown.
They knew this was the guy the manager had called about, Detwiler testified. There was only one person in the restaurant wearing a mask.
“Yeah, we don’t wear masks,” in Altoona, Detwiler explained in his testimony. “We have antibodies.”
“Can you pull your mask down?” the video showed Detwiler asking, while Mangione watched from the defense table, dressed in a dark suit and open-necked off-white dress shirt.
Then the footage played in court showed the moment Mangione complied, showing his full face, and everything changed.
As “Jingle Bell Rock” played on the McDonald’s speakers, the five-day manhunt that had captivated the country — involving hundreds of law enforcement personnel in New York City and beyond — had ended.
“I knew it was him immediately,” Detwiler testified.
It didn’t help that Mangione appeared “nervous,” as the officer described it on the stand, explaining, “I saw his fingers shaking a little bit.”
Defense lawyers are challenging the evidence and statements police took from Mangione in the 30-minute period when he was questioned and arrested in that McDonald’s.
By the time Mangione was cuffed and led out — with “Holly Jolly Christmas” playing on the restaurant sound system — some 10 cops had gathered in the restaurant.
They included the lieutenant who’d promised Detwiler a hoagie.
“I’m 100 percent sure that it’s him,” Detwiler testified he told the arriving lieutenant. “He was surprised,” Detwiler testified.
Prosecutors are trying to show that stopping, questioning, and searching the belongings of Mangione was proper, given the officers’ knowledge from the news media of the Thompson shooting suspect’s appearance and dangerousness.
Defense lawyers are arguing that Mangione was improperly questioned before he was read his Miranda rights, and they want the judge to rule that any statements he made can’t be used against him at trial.
On Tuesday, Detwiler described asking limited questions focused on Mangione’s identification and potential imminent dangerousness, not the facts of the case itself.
“Mark,” Mangione told police at first, when asked his name, according to the video. “Homeless,” he said, when asked his address.
“Did you ever mention the shooting in New York City?” Seidemann asked. “No,” Detwiler answered.
“Did you ever pull out your gun?”
“No,” the cop answered again.
Mangione’s lengthy hearing has so far featured testimony by five law enforcement and civilian witnesses involved in the manhunt and the Pennsylvania arrest. It is scheduled to continue Thursday and Friday — and possibly into next week.
New York Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro has not said when he will decide if any evidence must be barred from an eventual trial. Judges have yet to set trial dates for Mangione’s federal and state murder trials.
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