(NEW YORK) — A year to the day after Luigi Mangione allegedly stalked and gunned down United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan sidewalk, the 27-year-old alleged killer was identified in court by one of the police officers who first encountered him in Altoona, Pennsylvania, following the shooting.

“He’s the gentleman right there sitting between the female and the male.  Looks like he’s wearing a suit,” patrolman Tyler Frye said, pointing with his left hand.

Mangione’s lawyers are attempting to convince the judge overseeing his case to prohibit prosecutors from using critical evidence, including the alleged murder weapon and Mangione’s journal. They argue the evidence was unlawfully seized from his backpack without a warrant during his arrest. 

Mangione — in court for the third day of a pretrial hearing in his state murder case — flipped a pen in his right hand and then began writing on a white lined legal pad, largely ignoring body camera footage of his arrest that played on screens around the courtroom.

Frye, 26, was still a probationary officer, on the job less than a year, when he responded to a McDonalds on E. Plank Road after the dispatcher told them a manager had called 911 to report someone who looked like the person wanted in the shooting. 

On the body camera footage played in court, someone is heard directing the officers, “He’s back there.”

Frye is seen in the footage standing a few feet from Mangione while Mangione nibbled a hash brown as the officers stalled for time by engaging in small talk about the Steak McMuffin. 

Another officer is heard asking Mangione, “Do you know what all this nonsense is about?” Mangione is heard replying, “We’re going to find out I guess.”

Mangione gave the officers a fake New Jersey ID for a Mark Rosario. 

Officers subsequently informed Mangione he was under “official police investigation” and asked him his real name. Frye, on the video, is seen writing the name “Luigi Mangione” in a small notebook and providing his date of birth. At that point, Mangione is read is Miranda rights.

Defense attorneys are trying to exclude statements Mangione made and the contents of his backpack, including a 3D-printed gun and a red notebook. 

“Where were you standing in relation to the backpack?” prosecutor Joel Seidemann asked.  “Right near it,” Frye replied.

“Were you aware of that backpack?” Seidemann asked. “I was,” Frye said.

“When did you become aware of it?” asked Seidemann.

“About the time I walked in,” Frye replied.

The hearing has the potential to sideline what prosecutors say is some of the strongest evidence of Mangione’s guilt, and has provided the most detailed preview to date of their case against the alleged killer.

The proceedings could last into next week.

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(AUSTIN, Texas) — The mysterious death of Texas A&M student Brianna Aguilera has been ruled a suicide, police said, noting a suicide note found on her phone and reported previous comments about self-harm.

The investigation began at 12:46 a.m. Saturday when officers responded to an Austin apartment complex and found Aguilera on the ground with trauma from an apparent fall from a high floor, Austin Police Detective Robert Marshall said.

Cameras showed Aguilera arriving at the apartment complex just after 11 p.m. Friday and going to an apartment on the 17^th floor, Marshall said at a news conference on Thursday. The video showed “a large group of friends left that same apartment at 12:30 a.m. on Nov. 29, leaving just Brianna and three other girls in the apartment,” he said.

Earlier on Friday, Aguilera was at a tailgate for the Texas A&M vs. University of Texas football game, and she “became intoxicated to a point where she was asked to leave,” Marshall said.

Aguilera told her friends that she lost her phone, and when they arrived at the apartment Friday night, she borrowed a phone to call her boyfriend, he said.

Witnesses heard her argue on the phone with her boyfriend, Marshall said. That phone call took place from 12:43 a.m. to 12:44 am — two minutes before a 911 call, he said.

When police later found Aguilera’s lost phone, they recovered a “deleted digital suicide note dated Tuesday, Nov. 25 of this year, which was written to specific people in her life,” Marshall said.

“Brianna had made suicidal comments previously to friends, back in October of this year,” he said. “This continued through the evening of her death, with some self-harming actions early in the evening and a text message to another friend indicating the thought of suicide.”

No evidence in the investigation ever pointed to a crime, Marshall stressed, adding, “Every friend and witness during this investigation has been nothing but forthcoming and open.”

Aguilera’s family told local media earlier this week the beloved college student was not suicidal and was planning to pursue a career in law.

Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said at the news conference, “I understand how grief and the need for answers can raise intense emotions and many questions. But sometimes the truth doesn’t provide the answers we are hoping for, and that is this case.”

Davis said her “heart aches” for Aguilera’s parents.

“I have three daughters and a son, and I cannot begin to imagine the pain,” Davis said.

If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide — free, confidential help is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Call or text the national lifeline at 988.

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(NEW YORK) — The nationwide fight over the Trump Administration’s top prosecutors moves to an Albany courtroom this morning, when a federal judge hears arguments about whether Acting U.S. Attorney John Sarcone has the authority to act as Northern New York’s chief law enforcement officer.

New York Attorney General Letitia James began the legal fight against Sarcone after the Federal Bureau of Investigation served two grand jury subpoenas to her office for documents related to the civil cases against the Trump Organization and National Rifle Association.

The oral arguments over the legitimacy of the subpoenas and criminal investigation comes one week after a judge in Virginia dismissed a criminal mortgage fraud case against James over issues with the appointment of Trump’s handpicked prosecutor.

Lawyers for the attorney general’s office argue that the subpoenas and ongoing criminal investigations are a “flagrant abuse of the criminal justice system” to punish James’ office for bringing cases against the president, his business and his allies.

“The Executive Branch seeks to transform a personal grievance, which failed as civil claims, into a federal criminal prosecution—a plain and calculated campaign to harass a law enforcement agency that held Mr. Trump and his organization to account,” attorneys wrote in a motion to quash the subpoenas.

Last year, James won a half-billion-dollar penalty against Trump for inflating his net worth to secure better business deals, but a state appeals court vacated the financial penalty when it upheld the ruling earlier this year. According to court filings, a grand jury in Albany issued two subpoenas in August to the office to turn over any documents or records related to both cases to the Justice Department.

James’s office moved to quash both the subpoenas in August by arguing the subpoenas were issued in bad faith, lacked a legitimate legal basis, violated state sovereignty, infringed on First Amendment protections and were issued by an unlawfully appointed federal prosecutor.

“The U.S. Department of Justice asks this Court to treat this as an ordinary case. It portrays the subpoenas as routine. And it recites the usual standards governing grand jury investigations — while trying to ignore and trying to convince this Court to ignore the extraordinary reality before it, that these subpoenas are a flagrant abuse of the criminal justice system, even by this President’s standards,” lawyers for the office wrote.

Prosecutors with the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York have defended the subpoenas by arguing that the grand jury has vast power to investigate James because she allegedly “repeatedly promised to investigate, prosecute and sue the NRA and President Trump.”

“The challenged subpoenas … were issued by a validly empaneled grand jury in the Northern District of New York, which is entitled to investigate whether Attorney General Letitia James — alone or in concert with others — violated federal law by selectively pursuing the NYOAG Lawsuits against the NRA and President Trump when other similarly situated entities and individuals went unpursued,” prosecutors wrote.

The legal fight took on an added significance in recent months as the Trump administration’s policy of circumventing the Senate confirmation process for many of its U.S. attorneys has been scrutinized and rejected by federal judges.

A federal judge recently dismissed criminal cases against James and former FBI Director James Comey because the president’s handpicked prosecutor lacked the authority to bring the cases, and a federal appeals court unanimously upheld a decision on Monday disqualifying Alina Habba as the U.S. attorney in New Jersey.

Last month, U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield — a judge in the Southern District of New York overseeing the case after Northern District judges recused themselves — narrowed the purpose of today’s hearing to the sole question of whether Sarcone’s allegedly unlawful appointment invalidates the subpoenas.

Sarcone has functioned as the Acting U.S. attorney in Northern New York, but a panel of judges in July refused to permanently appoint him to lead the office following his controversial interim tenure. In response, Attorney General Pam Bondi named him as a “special attorney to the attorney general” who can indefinitely serve as northern New York’s top federal prosecutor.

Similar legal standoffs have sprouted across the country over the last few months, as federal courts have disqualified the U.S. attorneys in Nevada, California, and New Jersey. In each case, the Trump administration’s original picks to lead the office have remained in charge, bucking the long-standing practice of having the Senate confirm the president’s picks for the positions.

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