Luigi Mangione’s best friend breaks her silence after hearing ‘sweet’ confidante was charged with Brian Thompson’s murder

The best friend of Brian Thompson shooting suspect Luigi Mangione has broken her silence.

Tracy Le, a data analyst based in New York, said she was blindsided after Mangione was arrested and charged with the murder of the Healthcare CEO. 

In a lengthy tribute on Instagram, obtained by The Sun, Ms Le called Mangione her ‘sweet’ confidante.

In her post Ms Le wrote: ‘Luigi Mangione is probably the most googled keyword today.

‘When I first saw the news, I was hoping it was just either a common name or a mistake.’ 

Meanwhile, a former roommate previously revealed that a debilitating back injury reportedly left Mangione unable to have sex. 

The 26 year-old was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Monday morning five days after he allegedly gunned down Mr Thompson on the streets of Manhattan.

Mangione is now being held in solitary confinement ahead of his extradition back to New York City to face murder charges.

Ms Le goes on to refer to Mangione as ‘one of my best, closest and most trusted friends’.

She ended the heartfelt post saying: ‘I am shaken, I am blindsided, but most of all I, am sad.

‘I am heartbroken. I am overwhelmed.’

Her tribute comes after a man who lived with the murder defendant for six months at a Hawaii co-living space claimed Mangione suffered from a back injury so severe he was unable to have sex. 

RJ Martin said that Mangione had suffered after a back condition called spondylolisthesis was worsened by a surfing accident. 

Mr Martin said: ‘His spine was kind of misaligned. He said his lower vertebrae were almost like a half-inch off, and I think it pinched a nerve.’

He added that Mangione suffered from the debilitating pain throughout his six month stay at SurfBreak during 2022.

This also left him unable to date or be physically intimate.   

Mangione, an Ivy League-educated ‘anti-capitalist’, was taken into custody after a McDonald’s employee in Altoona, around 100 miles east of Pittsburgh, believed they recognized him as the gunman who murdered UnitedHealthcare’s CEO Brian Thompson on December 4.

Pennsylvania prosecutor Peter Weeks said in court that Mangione was found with a passport and $10,000 in cash – $2,000 of it in foreign currency. Mangione disputed the amount when he was arraigned.

He also had a three-page handwritten manifesto in his possession.  

At a press conference, the NYPD’s chief of detectives Joseph Kenny said Mangione had a three-page, handwritten document that shows ‘ill will toward corporate America.’

A law enforcement official who wasn’t authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity said the document included a line in which Mangione claimed to have acted alone.

‘To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone,’ the document said, according to the official.

It also had a line that said, ‘I do apologize for any strife or traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.’

At the scene of the killing, cops found bullets and bullet casings with the words ‘delay’, ‘deny’ and ‘depose’ scrawled on them. The words mimic a phrase used to criticize the insurance industry.

A grandson of a wealthy, self-made real estate developer and philanthropist, Mangione is a cousin of a current Maryland state legislator. Mangione was valedictorian at his elite Baltimore prep school, where his 2016 graduation speech lauded his classmates’ ‘incredible courage to explore the unknown and try new things.’

Mangione graduated top of his class from the elite Gilman School in Baltimore, and even delivered the commencement speech at his 2016 graduation, according to video of the ceremony.

‘He seemed like a smart kid, he was always doing the right thing, it seemed like,’ a former classmate, who was shocked by the arrest, told Fox News Digital, adding: ‘[He] wasn’t crazy.’

He went on to earn undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer science in 2020 from the University of Pennsylvania, a spokesperson said.

‘Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest,’ Mangione’s family said in a statement posted on social media late on Monday by his cousin, Maryland lawmaker Nino Mangione. ‘We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved.’

Luigi Nicholas Mangione worked for a time for the car-buying website TrueCar and left in 2023, CEO Jantoon Reigersman said by email.

From January to June 2022, Mangione lived at Surfbreak, a ‘co-living’ space at the edge of Honolulu tourist mecca Waikiki.

Although the gunman obscured his face during the shooting, he left a trail of evidence in New York, including a backpack he ditched in Central Park, a cellphone found in a pedestrian plaza, a water bottle and a protein bar wrapper.

In the days after the shooting, the NYPD collected hundreds of hours of surveillance video and released multiple clips and still images in hopes of enlisting the public’s eyes to help find a suspect.

‘This combination of old-school detective work and new-age technology is what led to this result today,’ Tisch said at the New York news conference.