Man Charged With Harassing Family of Slain UnitedHealth C.E.O.

New York Times

3 days ago

A man was arrested Wednesday and charged with sending violent, threatening voice messages to the family of Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealth chief executive who was gunned down in Midtown Manhattan last December.
Starting the day that Mr. Thompson was killed, Shane Daley, a resident of Galway, N.Y., about a 45-minute drive from Albany, left a series of voice mail messages at the Minnesota workplace of a family member of Mr. Thompson, federal prosecutors say. Mr. Daley said in the messages that the executive had deserved to die and, using an expletive, called him a 'capitalist pig' who was 'profiting off the backs of poor Americans,' according to prosecutors.
Mr. Daley, 40, was charged with cyberstalking and appeared before Magistrate Judge Daniel J. Stewart in Federal District Court in Albany on Wednesday afternoon. He was released with electronic monitoring and is due back in court Thursday for further proceedings, according to a spokesman with the U.S. attorney's office for the Northern District of New York.
Sam Breslin, a lawyer for Mr. Daley, declined to make a statement on his client's behalf, but said that 'all of Mr. Daley's rights, including the presumption of innocence, were preserved.' If convicted at trial, Mr. Daley faces up to five years in prison.
The crime that Mr. Daley is charged with is the latest example of the glee and anger elicited by Mr. Thompson's murder, particularly from those who felt intense antipathy toward the health care industry.
On Dec. 4, Mr. Thompson was shot to death outside a Hilton hotel on West 54th Street where he had arrived for an investors' day gathering. After a five-day manhunt, officers in Pennsylvania arrested and charged Luigi Mangione, now 27, with Mr. Thompson's murder. Federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Mr. Mangione.
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