Luigi Mangione’s Evidence Hearing so Far in 6 Images

The first two officers arriving at the McDonald’s on December 9, 2024 — the fifth day of the nationwide manhunt — had not been expecting much.

No one believed Thompson’s shooter would be in the restaurant — not the two cops, not their supervisor, not even the store manager who’d reluctantly called 911 at their customers’ insistence. The call had been dispatched as “Priority: Low.”

“What’s your name?” one of the officers asked, approaching Mangione at the back of the restaurant. “Uh, Mark,” Mangione answered, according to sealed police bodycam footage shown in court. He told them he was homeless.

He then handed over this New Jersey license — listing his name as “Mark Rosario.”

Mangione was then asked to pull down his blue-and-white paper medical mask, which Altoona patrolman Joseph Detwiler said made Mangioni stand out.

“We don’t wear masks,” Detwiler told the jury. “We have antibodies.”

When Mangione’s mask was lowered, everything changed. “I knew it was him immediately,” testified Detwiler. “I stayed calm.”

Bodycam footage showed the officer whistling along as Jingle Bell Rock played on the McDonald’s sound system — to keep Mangione calm as well, as they ran his license, he told the judge.

Detwiler had closely followed the manhunt for Thompson’s killer, the veteran patrolman told New York Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro from the witness stand.

He’d said he’d seen NYPD social media postings publicizing the as-yet-unnamed shooting suspect’s face. Elsewhere online, he had seen surveillance footage of the shooting, which was played in court.

“I knew in New York that they hadn’t found the firearm,” Detwiler testified. Safety, he explained, was behind the decision to frisk Mangione and search his backpack before arresting him on the initial Pennsylvania charges of forgery and providing a false ID to law enforcement.

Before they left the McDonald’s, Mangione had alerted the police to a small, silver folding knife they’d failed to find in his pocket, along with something that looked like a metal stylus and a

The knife was of legal size, Detwiler’s partner, Patrolman Tyler Frye, testified Thursday, adding that even so, “It could possibly hurt somebody — seriously.”

Once at the Altoona Police station, a more thorough search of Mangione’s backpack, pockets, clothing, and other belongings was conducted. Officers found this folded scrap of lined paper, filled with writing and diagrams in pencil.

Part doodled map, part to-do list, it is filled with dates and tasks, only some of which were accomplished. Under “12/8,” the words “Best buy” had been crossed off, as were mentions of a USB drive, “digital cam,” and “light source.”

“Hot meal” and “water bottles” were also crossed off.

Other items on the list — including “AAA bats” and “survival kit,” under the date 12/9, the day of his arrest — were not crossed out.

At the Altoona police station, cops recovered $7,800 in large bills and currency from Thailand, Japan, and India, totaling $1,620, from Mangioni’s backpack.

“There’s a weapon,” Patrolwoman Christy Wasser is heard saying soon after, in footage showing her continuing to search Mangione’s backpack.

Given the gun and the at-first-overlooked knife, the decision was made to strip-search Mangione.