12 December 2024

How an Assassin Escaped One of the Most Surveilled Cities in the World

Alyssa Lukpat, Brian McGill, Tania Colon-Bosch and Taylor Umlauf

The UnitedHealth assassin has evaded police in one of the most surveilled cities in the world but has left a trail of clues to his whereabouts.

Investigators are using a web of public and private cameras to hunt the suspect who fatally shot Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealth’s insurance arm. The killing outside a New York City Hilton hotel was captured on video Wednesday, along with several other stops the suspect has made.

Amnesty International has estimated New York City has more than 25,000 cameras at traffic intersections alone. The city introduced a new drone surveillance initiative over Central Park last month to help solve crimes there and in other areas.

The images offer hints about the killer’s journey as he went to Starbucks and slipped away in Manhattan. But there are holes in the timeline the investigators made public, underscoring how difficult it can be to track a single man in a city of more than eight million.

The New York City Police Department said Friday afternoon they think the suspect left the state on a bus. Police said investigators used surveillance footage to track the suspect’s path out of Central Park and up the west side of Manhattan, from which they think he made his getaway out of New York.

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