Man With Gun Arrested at UnitedHealth Headquarters

At UnitedHealthcare's headquarters in Minnesota, a young man was arrested with a weapon after calling in threats against the insurance giant.

As USA Today and other outlets report, police arrested 26-year-old Ian Wagner with a gun and bullets near UHC's Minnetonka campus after an hour of phone negotiations led to his surrender.

Though he's the same age as Luigi Mangione, the suspect accused of killing UHC CEO Brian Thompson in December, the two alleged gunmen couldn't be more different.

While Mangione appears to have been an ideologue driven to mortal violence by his hatred of the insurance industry, it doesn't seem that Wagner, who was well known to Minnetonka police due to prior felonies and open felony and misdemeanor cases, was similarly principled. When the suspect called 9-1-1, he allegedly told the police dispatcher that he would shoot into the UHC facilities if the charges against him were not dropped — and apparently, he made similar demands when he phoned the FBI's Minneapolis field office, too.

"While the investigation is still in its early stages," the FBI told USA Today, "there is currently no indication that the individual had specific grievances against UnitedHealthcare."

Following Wagner's arrest earlier in the week, Twin Cities broadcaster KTSP reported that the 26-year-old's threats against UHC came just after police made multiple attempts to arrest him over probation violations stemming from his other charges.

Cheryl Wagner, the suspect's mother, told the ABC affiliate that her son suffers from mental health issues and was set off by the arrest attempts. He apparently drove to his grandparents' house, retrieved a gun there, and headed to the insurer's headquarters.

Though the young man had been wearing an ankle monitor as part of his electronic home monitoring from his felony convictions — details about which have not been shared with media — authorities told KTSB that the device was not equipped with GPS and could only tell them when Wagner was out of range.

In a sense, that technology fail echoes the way Mangione was apprehended: not with the NYPD's expensive facial recognition and AI surveillance tools, but thanks to a random eagle-eyed employee at a Pennsylvania McDonald's who recognized him from the news.

Though authorities insist Wagner only made his threats for attention, the would-be gunman seemed to intentionally echo Thompson's assassination when he appeared in court while wearing an anti-self-harming flak jacket after his arrest. According to KTSB, he shouted the words "power, money, [and] corruption" during his hearing — a reference, perhaps, to the words "deny, defend, [and] depose" that were found on the bullet casings from the UHC CEO's slaying.

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