Michael Horan

San Francisco police sergeant.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sfpd-id-20064070.php

“San Francisco police Sgt. Michael Horan had just cracked open a new missing persons case when updates from a crime 2,500 miles away began flooding the country’s news feeds.

It was the morning of Dec. 5, and New York officials had released the first photos of an unidentified suspect wanted in the brazen, fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson a day earlier.

The suspect’s partially exposed face continued to dominate news cycles as Horan began poring over the Instagram account of the subject in his own missing persons case: A young, Ivy-League graduate, Luigi Mangione.

“There were a couple of these photos where he’s smiling at just the right angle, and it just kind of dawned on me,” Horan said. “Like, oh my God. That smile looks exactly like the guy in the surveillance photos.

After conferring with Siragusa and other officers at the station, the investigators decided that the likeness to the murder suspect was strong enough to pass the tip onto the local FBI, who forwarded the information along to New York officials.

Before police could fully vet the tip, officials said, Luigi Mangione was separately spotted having breakfast at McDonalds.”