NEW YORK (AP) As the dragnet for UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson skiller continued into its sixth day, police dogs and divers made their way back to Central Park in New York on Monday.
Since the shooting on Wednesday, investigators have been scouring the park and, for the past three days, they have been checking at least one of its ponds for evidence that might have been dumped into it.
Police said the killer escaped from the crime site outside the New York Hilton Midtown in Manhattan to an uptown bus terminal, where they believe he departed the city on a bus, and they found a backpack in the park on Friday.
However, neither the gun nor the gunman have been located, nor have they been able to identify him by name.
In Central Park, close to where police discovered the shooter’s rucksack, K-9 teams smelled leaf-covered plants between walking paths on Monday. For the third day in a row, scuba divers prepared and began searching a pond farther along the route police believe he took through the park following the shooting.
As Thompson, 50, walked alone to the Hilton from a nearby hotel where UnitedHealthcare’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group, was hosting its annual investor conference, he was assassinated in what authorities described as a blatant, deliberate attack.
According to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, the shooter seemed to be waiting for a few minutes before coming up behind the executive and starting to fire.
The phrases “delay, deny, and depose” were found in ammunition discovered close to Thompson’s body, echoing a slogan used by opponents of the insurance business.
Investigators said the shooter escaped into Central Park on a bicycle at 60th Street and Center Drive, came out of the park without his bag around 77th Street and Central Park West, and then abandoned the bicycle at 7 a.m. near 85th Street. They were able to trace the gunman’s movements using surveillance footage.
At 7:30 a.m., he arrived at the George Washington Bridge Bus Station, which is close to Manhattan’s northern tip and provides commuter service to New Jersey as well as Greyhound routes to Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington, after walking a few blocks and boarding a taxi, according to NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny.
In addition to the NYPD’s reward of up to $10,000, the FBI announced late Friday that it was offering a $50,000 reward for information that results in an arrest and conviction. The culprit, according to the police, acted alone.
Two further images of the suspect, which seemed to be taken from a camera installed inside a taxi, were made public by police late Saturday. In the first, he is seen outside the car, and in the second, he is seen peering through the partition that separates the front of the cab from the back seat. In both, a blue mask covers part of his face.
There is an unusual contrast between joggers, tourists, and an active crime scene as a result of the NYPD’s efforts to minimize disturbance to park users throughout the search.
To provide the divers with a place to change and enter the water, a 150-foot (50-meter) stretch of the park was roped off with blue and white police tape on Monday.
A group of roughly thirty French-speaking visitors once followed a guide down a route, but the police tape prevented them from continuing. Many of them pulled out their phones to take a picture of the divers before they turned around.
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