Police imagine suspect left New York

Closed circuit screenshots of a person of interest in the UnitedHealthcare CEO killing.

Source: NYPD

Police believe the person of interest being sought in connection to the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson left New York City shortly after the slaying Wednesday, on a bus from upper Manhattan.

New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch told CNN in an interview Friday that police on Thursday released photos showing the face of that person not wearing a mask because investigators want “a wider audience to see the picture outside of New York City.”

Tisch said police have a “huge amount of evidence,” which includes “lots of forensic evidence, fingerprints, DNA evidence,” as well as a “massive camera canvas” of the gunman’s movements throughout the city.

“We have every reason to believe that this was a targeted attack on an individual, rather than a random act of violence,” Tisch said. “We have released the photo yesterday. We would appreciate you getting that photo out to your audience because we also have reason to believe that the person in question has left New York City.”

New York has an extensive network of government and private surveillance cameras. Police and prosecutors have specialized teams that sift through surveillance video to track suspects, and match facial and body characteristics as well as clothing details.

Top NYPD brass told CNN that surveillance footage showed the person of interest riding a bike from the scene of Wednesday’s fatal shooting of Thompson in midtown Manhattan to Central Park, and then exiting the park near West 77th Street on the bike.

Other footage shows that person walking at West 86th Street and Columbus Avenue before entering a taxi cab that drove him about five miles north to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Washington Heights, right next to the George Washington Bridge, police said.

The man then entered the bus terminal, according to NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny.

“Those buses are interstate buses,” Kenny told CNN. “That’s why we believe he may have left
New York City.”

Read more on the Brian Thompson shooting

Kenny said police are trying to determine which bus the man might have boarded.

“We have video of him entering the Port Authority Bus Terminal. We don’t have any video of him exiting so we believe he may have gotten on a bus,” Kenny said.

In addition to westbound buses, the terminal also has shuttle vans that carry passengers over the George Washington Bridge on the other side of the Hudson River to Fort Lee, New Jersey, and to points further west.

Law enforcement sources on Thursday said the unidentified suspect in Thompson’s shooting traveled from Atlanta on a Greyhound bus that arrived in Manhattan on Nov. 24.

That was two days before UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare, announced it would hold an investor day on Dec. 4 at the Hilton Hotel in midtown.

Thompson, 50, was shot as he was about to walk into the Hilton by a gunman wearing a mask or neck gaiter over his face.

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