Moments after Luigi Mangione was put in handcuffs at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s, a police officer searching his backpack found a loaded gun magazine wrapped in a pair of underwear.

Moments after Luigi Mangione was handcuffed at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s, a police officer searching his backpack found a loaded gun magazine wrapped in a pair of underwear.

The discovery, recounted in court Monday as Mangione fights to keep evidence out of his New York murder case, convinced police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, that he was the man wanted in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan five days earlier.

  • Makeitstop@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2191·
    7 天前

    On body-worn camera video played in court, Wasser was heard saying she wanted to check the bag for bombs before removing it from the McDonald’s. Despite that concern, she acknowledged in her testimony Monday that police never cleared the restaurant of customers or employees.

    Unless they had probable cause to believe there was a bomb, that’s absolutely no excuse for a search. Might as well just get rid of the fourth amendment altogether if police can just imagine the possibility of a dangerous object and excuse searching anything at any time.

    If she really thought there was a bomb, she is recklessly handling this herself instead of calling in a properly trained and equipped bomb squad. But far worse, she claims she needed to check it so as not bring a bomb to the station, but apparently has no problem potentially handling a bomb around a bunch of innocent bystanders.

    That she is lying in order to justify what she knew to be an illegal search is actually the least damning interpretation. Either way though, the evidence should be thrown out along with her career.

    • Manjushri@piefed.socialEnglish
      127·
      7 天前

      I replied at about the same time as you, with similar comment, but I wanted to add that she didn’t ‘find’ the gun and silencer until she took the bag on an 11 minute ride to the station in her car. How do you search a bag for a possible bomb and miss a handgun and silencer? That is an incompetent search or the gun wasn’t there during the initial search and was added later.

    • UnspecificGravity@piefed.socialEnglish
      22·
      6 天前

      Not only that but also somehow failed to find a full sized pistol and silencer while searching the bag for explosives, which is pretty alarming.

    • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
      12·
      6 天前

      Also, she apparently hadn’t even searched it well enough to notice a gun sitting in it…so not sure she’d have noticed a bomb in there anyway.

      (Not that any of this isn’t a bullshit frame job, as that gun clearly got tossed in before her body camera got turned back on once back at the station)