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They found him yesterday.
He was sitting at a table in a fast food restaurant. He wasn’t trying to hide, either.
He had his backpack with him and in it the gun he’d used to kill the health care executive in New York.
Luigi put up no resistance. He’d even typed up a statement saying that he had acted alone.
The information we’re getting tell us that he was a smart kid. Valedictorian for his high school class. Went on to obtain a graduate degree in computer science. Had worked in the Bay Area as recently as last year.
He had been nursing a back problem for which he had surgery. I now think that his choice of the heath care executive as a target had something to do with coverage problems for the back surgery.
But whatever, Luigi Mangione ended up isolating. Ended up disconnecting.
Whatever social ties he had built over the years weren’t enough. They failed him.
We human beings are complex, but we need each other to thrive. Need each other to fulfill our potentials. It’s in our genes. Call it the social genes. We can’t do without them.
We may need to be alone, now and then, but we have to keep connected, otherwise we degrade.
Luigi degraded. In his degradation, Luigi came up with violent thoughts and he acted on them. There was no prior history of violence. And now he’s surrendered his life while taking another.
All the work that went into making Luigi Mangione is all gone now. So sad.
Details will emerge in due time but at bottom, like in any…
