Photo: Handout via Reuters / Altoona Police Department

An X-ray image seems to depict screws and plates implanted in a lower back. Social media commentary lauds the Unabomber and condemns the use of smartphones by children. These posts, attributed to Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old suspect in the recent killing of a health insurance executive in New York, reveal an Ivy League graduate who had become critical of social media and artificial intelligence.

Here's what is known about Mangione:

What police say

Mangione was born and raised in Maryland, attended college in Pennsylvania, and is believed to have harbored animosity towards corporate America, according to a document found on him, as stated by Joseph Kenny, chief of detectives for the New York police. Mangione has connections to San Francisco, lived in Honolulu until recently, and is thought to have acted alone, Kenny said. He has no known criminal record in New York.

Was he an Ivy League graduate?

A person with the same name was the 2016 valedictorian of the private, all-boys Gilman School in Baltimore. The school did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The New York Times reported that Gilman sent an email to alumni, with principal Henry Smyth expressing deep distress over the news. The University of Pennsylvania confirmed that a Luigi Mangione graduated in 2020 with a master's degree in engineering, majoring in computer and information science. Stanford University noted that a person by the same name worked as a head counselor for the Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies program from May to September 2019.

What was his job?

Luigi Mangione worked for TrueCar until 2023, according to a spokesperson for the car retail site. A former colleague, a software engineer at TrueCar, described Mangione as a kind and helpful individual who was very smart. "There has to be a mistake. The Luigi I know is a super kind guy," the former colleague said, requesting anonymity to avoid social media attention.

What his social media pages say

A Facebook profile for a Luigi Mangione identifies him as being from Towson, Maryland. Local media reported that his family owned a country club and radio station in the Baltimore area, and his cousin was Maryland House of Delegates member Nino Mangione. The legislator did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A banner on Mangione's X page, which states he lives in Honolulu, features an X-ray image of screws and plates in a lower back. Posts from two years ago critique artificial intelligence, repost commentaries against diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and discuss the harm of smartphones to children and the damage from commercial agriculture. A 2022 post revisits his high school senior speech on topics from AI to human immortality, questioning some of the technology he once admired. On Goodreads, a Luigi Mangione praises Unabomber Ted Kaczynski's book "Industrial Society and Its Future" as "prescient" about modern society, quoting an online commentator who observed that "when all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive."

Source link:   https://www.khaleejtimes.com