Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was fatally shot in Midtown Manhattan early Wednesday morning while walking toward the New York Hilton Midtown for his company’s annual investor conference. According to emerging media reports, Thompson was fired on from roughly 20 feet away by a masked gunman who appeared to be waiting for Thompson and who escaped by bicycle.
Law enforcement continued to canvas the area in the shooting’s aftermath; according to the New York Times, police said they would offer $10,000 to anyone with information about the attack.
Thompson, 50, was named CEO of United Healthcare — one of the biggest health insurers in the U.S. — in April 2021 after a more than 20-year career with the company that began when he joined as a director of corporate development.
UnitedHealthcare revealed in October that more than 100 million individuals had their private health information stolen during the ransomware attack on one of its subsidiaries, Change Healthcare, in February, a cyberattack that caused months of unprecedented outages and widespread disruption across the U.S. healthcare sector.
