Brian Thompson, the 50-year-old CEO of UnitedHealthcare, had a short walk to his presumed destination early Wednesday morning: the Hilton Hotel in midtown Manhattan where his company was holding its annual investors conference. The executive, who lived in a suburb near his company’s Minneapolis-area headquarters, was staying at a hotel just across the street, according to reports.
Apparently walking alone, Thompson wore a blue blazer with no overcoat, despite the chill in the air. At around 6:46 a.m., he was just seconds away from one of the Hilton’s entrances on West 54th Street when a figure in a black face mask approached him holding a long handgun, shot Thompson several times from behind, then swiftly crossed the street and entered an alleyway next to New York’s famous Ziegfeld Theater.
The gunman, wearing a cream-colored jacket, was caught on camera as he walked up to Thompson and began shooting. After the weapon appeared to malfunction, he quickly cleared the jam and continued to fire. Fleeing on foot, he transferred to an e-bike and rode up Sixth Avenue into Central Park, as police would later discover.
Thompson was left collapsed on the sidewalk. Officers from the New York Police Department gave him CPR as they waited for an ambulance. The CEO was taken to Roosevelt Hospital, where he was pronounced dead less than 30 minutes later.
Police sources have determined the shooter had arrived in New York from Atlanta by bus last month, according to ABC News, and checked in at a local hostel at the end of November. Authorities searched that hostel in Manhattan on Thursday.
And most notably, police have released photos of a person of interest that shows a man’s full face. He is pictured smiling, wearing a khaki-colored hoodie and a jacket.
“This does not appear to be a random act of violence,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Wednesday. She added that it was a “brazen, targeted attack.”
A horrible realization
Inside the Hilton hotel that morning, the company’s daylong investors conference for 2024, called IC24, began as normal around 8 a.m.
UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty gave opening remarks in one of the conference’s presentation rooms, Michael Ha, a Baird stock analyst, told the New York Times.
But news about the shooting soon began to circulate, according to another investor who was in the third-floor conference room where attendees had gathered, who asked to have his name withheld. People were sitting in chairs, many with their laptops open to market news, when early headlines about the shooting began to appear. Others were following the story on their phones. Audience members started to look around and chat with one another, trying to piece together what they were reading, the investor told Fortune. About 10 minutes later, Witty appeared on stage and canceled the event, citing a medical emergency.
As the crowd slowly realized what had happened, people began to get emotional and leave the room.
“He was a stand-up guy, a good dude,” the investor said of Thompson. “I’ve never met anyone who had anything bad to say about him.” He had met Thompson several times at investor dinners on the eves of past conferences, he explained, and was in disbelief. “He would have been at one of those dinners last night.”
Signs for the IC24 event were still standing in the Hilton Lobby at 10 a.m., until an organizer swooped in to grab several and stow them under her arm. On the third floor, only a handful of attendees still wearing their lanyards lingered, making calls next to their luggage. Outside, police closed access to the West 54th block where Thompson was slain and directed pedestrians around the police tape through the hotel’s parking entrance. And on Sixth Avenue, solemn-faced executives in blue shook their heads “No” at reporters as they waited for drivers. Other executives were ushered out to the street and into black Suburbans.
UnitedHealth Group issued a statement about Thompson’s death before noon. “We are deeply saddened and shocked at the passing of our dear friend and colleague Brian Thompson, the C.E.O. of UnitedHealthcare,” it read. “Brian was a highly respected colleague and friend to all who worked with him. We are working closely with the New York Police Department and ask for your patience and understanding during this difficult time.”
By the early afternoon, the company’s website had been scrubbed of pages listing its executives and board members.
Who was Brian Thompson?
Although he led the $281 billion insurance arm of UnitedHealth Group, and was the lead executive at the company’s consumer-facing brand, Thompson kept a relatively low profile.
A lifelong Midwesterner, he was born in Jewell, Iowa, a rural town with a population of about 1,200, an hour away from Des Moines. In high school, he was an athlete and class president, according to the Des Moines Register. In 1997, he graduated from the University of Iowa, where he studied business administration and accounting, his LinkedIn profile shows. Later that year, he began working as an audit department manager at a Twin Cities outpost of the consulting firm PwC.
Thompson joined UnitedHealthcare as a director in corporate development in 2004. He would go on to hold several roles—including chief financial officer and chief executive of the UnitedHealthcare divisions overseeing Medicaid and retirement insurance plans, and government programs—before being named CEO of the entire insurance business, by far the largest in the U.S., in 2021.
The executive, a father of two, was married, but for the past several years, he and his wife, Paulette Thompson, had been living in separate homes less than a mile away from each other in Maple Grove, Minn., the Wall Street Journal reported. Reached by NBC on Wednesday morning, Thompson’s wife told the news outlet that she could not give a “thoughtful” response. “I just found this out and I’m trying to console my children,” she said.
She added that Thompson had been receiving threats, although she didn’t know the details about why. “I don’t know, a lack of coverage?” she said, explaining also that Thompson had not changed his travel plans in response. Thompson was not traveling with a security detail, according to New York police.
The company’s latest proxy statement does not include any disclosures about security expenses, except to state that UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty is “required for personal security reasons to use corporate aircraft for all business travel and is encouraged to use corporate aircraft for all personal travel, including family travel.” Companies do not need to disclose security spending unless expenses exceed $10,000.
A complicated reaction
In tributes posted online, several colleagues and Wall Street professionals who knew Thompson commented on his affability.
Justin Lake, an analyst at Wolfe Research wrote in a note to clients that thousands of people had been touched by Thompson’s good nature. “BT has been a friend and colleague for nearly 20 years and over that time I watched as he climbed the ranks at UNH while earning the respect and admiration of everyone that occupied his orbit,” he wrote.
Matt Burns, whose LinkedIn shows that he previously worked at UnitedHealth Group, wrote glowingly of Thompson, saying that he “toggled between his leadership role and relatable Joe as effectively and easily as anyone I’ve encountered professionally.”
However, Thompson’s tenure at the insurance company was not without controversy. He was also one of several UnitedHealthcare executives facing accusations of fraud and a potential inquiry into insider trades.
Last May, the Hollywood Firefighters’ Pension Fund filed a lawsuit against the parent company, Witty, Thompson, and executive chairman Stephen Hemsley, alleging that they schemed to prop up the insurer’s share price by not disclosing that the Department of Justice was planning to investigate the company for antitrust practices. The suit alleges that Thompson was aware of the inquiry at the time that he sold 31% of his employee shares—worth $15 million—less than two weeks before a Department of Justice investigation became public knowledge. The DOJ investigation sent the company’s share price down by 5%.
UnitedHealthcare did not immediately return Fortune’s request for comment about the allegations.
The backlash begins
As shock ricocheted throughout the business community and prominent politicians (including Minnesota’s Senator Amy Klobuchar and Governor Tim Walz) publicly mourned Thompson, a backlash against UnitedHealthcare and the insurance business more broadly was also taking shape.
American health insurance companies are often the target of ire from consumers furious over rising fees, denied claims for vital healthcare, and opaque business practices. Data from personal finance platform ValuePenguin showed that UnitedHealthcare denies 32% of claims compared to the industry average of 16%. Last year, a class action lawsuit filed in a federal court in Minnesota also charged that the company used artificial intelligence to turn down 90% of health coverage claims, before those decisions could be overturned upon appeal. Lawyers for UnitedHealthcare argued that the plaintiffs “failed to exhaust the exclusive administrative appeal process set by the Medicare Act” and requested that the case be dismissed. Health industry news site Stat reports that Medicare’s appeals process is backlogged, and that completing that process can take years and be a drain on finances.
UnitedHealth Group is fourth on this year’s Fortune 500. As CEO of the parent group’s largest subsidiary, Thompson earned more than $10 million in 2023, company filings show.
The detail found its way into several scornful messages about Thompson’s killing on social media. On X and LinkedIn, users wrote that they mourned not for Thompson, but for people who have had their insurance claims denied, and shared personal histories about their struggles with a sick family member and the company’s response.
That animosity toward the insurer has fueled speculation as to the shooter’s motives for killing Thompson. Among the clues gathered by the NYPD were words inscribed on three bullets found near the crime scene: Deny, Defend, Depose. The words are similar to the title of a book about the insurance industry’s ethically suspect practices that allow companies to rake in billions by finding reasons not to cover medical treatments for paying customers, Delay, Deny, Defend.
Executive safety fears
There are still more questions about the incident than answers, and updates to the killing are trickling in by the hour.
The attack has prompted new fears about executive safety, and seems to confirm the thinking behind a trend over the past few years of spending more money to protect top business leaders. Tesla’s Elon Musk, Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, and Meta Platforms’ Mark Zuckerberg, for example, cost their companies millions of dollars a year to protect.
“We don’t know the motivation. Certainly, if it’s a personal motivation, that changes the landscape a little bit,” Glen Kucera, president of the enhanced protection services division at Allied Universal, a security services company, told Fortune. “If it was motivated by the business that they’re in, the health care business, or anything that could be related, then certainly that’s a wake-up call to a lot of CEOs and executives traveling throughout the country and the world.”
Dennis Franks, a retired FBI Special Agent and vice president of the Texas-based Viollis Group International security firm, who has provided security for executives at some of the largest global companies, told Fortune that he was “not surprised at all” that Thompson didn’t have security with him as he walked the streets of New York. “The level of protection for executives varies and I would say in general that it’s very lacking,” he said. “A lot of executives don’t want it, and they don’t have it. A lot of companies are not willing to spend the money because it gets very expensive.”
Franks said Thompson would have ideally been accompanied by two or three security guards—including one walking beside him, and one tailing the executive.
Looking ahead
UnitedHealthcare has not revealed who is running the company in the wake of Wednesday’s shooting and directed Fortune to an updated statement about the crisis when asked about succession plans. “Our priorities are, first and foremost, supporting Brian’s family; ensuring the safety of our employees; and working with law enforcement to bring the perpetrator to justice,” it read. “We ask that everyone respect the family’s privacy as they mourn the loss of their husband, father, brother and friend.”
Julie Utterback, an equity analyst at Morningstar, told Fortune that the company has “a deep bench of management talent.”
“I would not think of that organization as being dependent on any one individual to continue performing well,” she said.“So while losing Brian is a very sad event for the organization, we expect the company will be able to bring in one of its many other leaders to succeed Brian.”
As the workweek came to an end on Dec. 6, the manhunt continued.
—With reporting from Brit Morse, Emma Burleigh, and Sasha Rogelberg
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com