Brian Thompson shooting latest: Day 3 of manhunt for UnitedHealthcare CEO killer

The gunman who killed UnitedHealthcare CEO “definitely planned this out,” authorities told CNN on Friday as the manhunt continues.

NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said they video of the suspect about 30 minutes before the shooting, “walking and wandering around the hotel area before he committed this act.”

“He knew what time the victim was going to be walking by. He knew what hotel this conference was going to be in,” Kenny said.

Investigators are still going through footage as the NYPD has access to “tens of thousands of cameras” around the city, New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said, something she said has been “huge” in the investigation.

The gunman who killed UnitedHealthcare CEO “definitely planned this out,” authorities told CNN on Friday as the manhunt continues.

NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said they video of the suspect about 30 minutes before the shooting, “walking and wandering around the hotel area before he committed this act.”

“He knew what time the victim was going to be walking by. He knew what hotel this conference was going to be in,” Kenny said.

Investigators are still going through footage as the NYPD has access to “tens of thousands of cameras” around the city, New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said, something she said has been “huge” in the investigation.

Andrew Witty, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare, released a video on Thursday addressing employees’ safety concerns after the shooting of CEO Brian Thompson.

“I want to reiterate just how immeasurably sad the tragic passing of Brian really is to his family, to his friends, to all of his work colleagues and, frankly, to the American health care industry within which Brian was an innovator and somebody who endlessly put patient interests first to try and improve health care for everybody,” Witty said in the video obtained by CNN.

He described the circumstances of Thompson’s death as “profoundly shocking and disturbing.”

Witty told the employees that the company has heightened security measures at its facilities nationwide, including security checks before people enter campuses.

The suspect in the CEO shooting was captured on video dumping something on a pile of trash minutes before the killing of Brian Thompson.

Police say there may be DNA on whatever he dumped that could help them learn his identity.

The man is seen walking on West 55th Street toward the Hilton at 6:19 a.m. on Wednesday, according to footage obtained by Newsweek.

He walks past the first pile of blue plastic bags near the Stage Star Deli at 105 West 55th Street and then pauses in front of a pile of white plastic bags. The video at the deli captures the man as he leans forward and places some small object on one of the bags and continues walking.

Thompson was gunned down outside the Hilton at 6:45 a.m.

Police say they have  a “reason to believe” that the person of interest in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has left New York City, according to police commissioner Jessica Tisch.

Tisch told CNN on Friday that police released the photos of the suspect not wearing a mask on Thursday because they want a “wider audience to see the picture outside of New York City.”

Police are urging anyone with information about the shooter to send in tips.

Some of the tips that are being investigated have come in via TikTok.

One posted a TikTok video and sent it to the tip line proclaiming, “I think that’s the guy,” according to the police.

Another tipster, Phil Watson, sent photos of a man he called a “dead ringer” for the suspect to the police, with arrows to point out facial resemblances, according to the New York Times.

“I think they are overwhelmed,” Watson wrote in an email to The Times.

Carlos Nieves, the department’s assistant commissioner of public information, says they have received hundreds of tips – but they want more.

Tips can be called into the tip line at 800-577-TIPS — or online.

Spokesperson Danielle Brumfitt said the hostel where the suspect stayed before the shooting is cooperating with the police and can’t comment on the investigation.

Police released photos Thursday, taken inside the HI New York City hostel on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, of a person they said was wanted for questioning in the shooting.

Investigators believe the suspect used a fake New Jersey identification card when he checked in at the hostel, said one official who spoke with the AP.

Employees at the hostel said they remembered a man who almost always wore a mask when interacting with them.

That person wore a jacket that looked like the one worn by the man pictured in surveillance images released after the shooting, the official said.

Joe DeVito was on a long drive from a gig in Nashville to New York on Thursday with the news of a health insurance CEO being gunned down heavy on his mind.

He saw that people were using the death as an opportunity to express anger at the health insurance industry and share their own stories of being denied coverage for care. Along the way, in Virginia, he pulled over at a rest stop to record a song about it.

“I wanted to throw my two cents in and try and try and convey that rage, and why people are so mad,” he said.

The NYPD is looking into the hundreds of tips that have come in since Thompson was gunned down.

Carlos Nieves, the NYPD’s assistant commission of public information, said to keep them coming.

“You may think that piece of information is trivial. I’m telling you, please give us that information,” he said. “Trivial or not, it might be the piece of information that puts it all together for us.”

Nieves revealed to the New York Post that one tipster claims to have gone to school with the suspect.

“The guys in (CrimeStoppers) were actually saying, ‘We hang up the phone and another call comes in,” Nieves added. “One was actually coming in as I was speaking to them. It was actually a TikTok video and it says ‘I think this is the guy.’ So we have to look into that.”