Police in the United States have released new images of a “person of interest” in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a New York City hotel.
The CCTV stills released by the New York Police Department (NYPD) on Thursday show a man wearing a hooded jacket with his face clearly visible.
Previous images released by police showed a man with most of his face concealed by a mask.
Thompson, 50, was shot dead on Wednesday in an early morning ambush outside the New York Hilton Midtown hotel.
Surveillance video that has circulated widely on social media shows the attacker emerging from behind a car and shooting Thompson several times before fleeing the scene.
NYPD officials have described the killing as a “premeditated” and “targeted” attack.
Shell casings left at the scene were emblazoned with the words “deny,” “defend” and “depose”, multiple media outlets have reported, citing unnamed law enforcement sources.
The inscriptions on the ammunition resemble the title of a 2010 book – Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It – about the tactics insurance companies use to avoid paying claims.
Police have not announced a suspected motive in Thompson’s murder, but his wife told US media “there had been some threats” against her husband.
Thompson’s death has unleashed a flood of social media commentary celebrating his murder or expressing sympathy with the killer.
Many of those expressing glee over the murder cited negative experiences where UnitedHealthcare refused to cover their medical care.
“And people wonder why we want these executives dead,” Taylor Lorenz, a former journalist with The New York Times and Washington Post, wrote on the social media platform Bluesky.
Lorenz elaborated in a follow-up post on Substack that people should not murder insurance executives, but “if you’ve watched a loved one suffer and die from insurance denial, it’s normal to wish the people responsible would suffer the same fate”.
UnitedHealthcare is one of the biggest health insurers in the US, providing health coverage to more than 49 million Americans.
The company had revenues of $371.6bn in 2023, up nearly 15 percent from the previous year.
Thompson, who joined the insurer in 2004 and had served as CEO since 2021, received $10.2m in compensation the same year.
