Police Were Able To Get A Photo Of UnitedHealthcare CEO Assassin’s Face Because He Lowered His Mask To Flirt With A Woman At His Hostel

This whole thing is straight out of a movie. Today police released new photos showing the face of a "person of interest" in the shocking murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson yesterday in New York City. Thompson was in NYC for an investors meeting, but while walking into the Hilton Hotel yesterday morning around 6:45 AM, a man emerged from behind a parked car and shot him in the back. The CEO was taken to a hospital, where he died a short time later. The shooter then fled the scene on foot before hopping on an e-bike and heading uptown towards Central Park, and police have been trying to track him from there ever since. Police have called the shooting a targeted attack, and revealed earlier today that the words "delay" and "depose" were written on two of the shell casings left behind by the shooter, and it's widely speculated that those refer to the insurance industry motto of "delay, deny, defend" - meaning delay making a decision on a claim, deny the claim, and then defend the denial. Since the shooting, we've gotten a steady stream of updates on the progress of the investigation. Yesterday, the NYPD released surveillance photos that they say show the shooter at Starbucks just minutes before the attack. He reportedly bought a bottle of water, which police believe they found while retracing his steps after the shooting. And they also found a cell phone that they believe may be connected to the shooting, and are working to get into that to look for more information. We also learned that police believe the man was staying at a hostel on the Upper West Side, where he arrived on November 24 on a bus from Atlanta. He reportedly checked in with a fake New Jersey ID and paid cash for his room, so it seems like this guy did a pretty good job of concealing his identity ahead of time. But it turns out, he may have made one critical error: Flirting with an employee. Earlier today, the NYPD released new surveillance images that, for the first time, show the suspect without a mask on. https://twitter.com/NYPDnews/status/1864706407985221974 Seems like he wore his mask pretty religiously, which probably wouldn't seem that out of place in a city like NYC where I'm sure there are a decent number of people who are still wearing masks to "protect themselves from COVID." (Don't get me started on that, that's for a different time). But anyway, according to CNN, apparently police were able to obtain the unmasked photos of the man because he pulled his mask down to show his face to an employee of the hostel that he was flirting with. The police have reportedly interviewed the employee, who said she asked the gunman to take off his mask so that she could see what his face looked like - and that's when they got the photos that were released today. I mean, tell me this doesn't sound like a thriller movie. You have a hired hitman who does seemingly everything he needs to do to get away with the crime, but he meets a woman that he's interested in and slips up because he was flirting. I'm telling you, the movies about this story will win awards. Of course right now police are still hunting for the suspect, but once they do end up catching him, it may all be because he was trying to get some action from a lady in the middle of his murder plot.