Police consider the person wanted in reference to the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson left New York City on a bus from Upper Manhattan shortly after the killing on Wednesday.
New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch said CNN In an interview Friday, police said they released photos Thursday showing that person's face and not using a mask because investigators wanted “a broader audience to see the image outside of New York City.”
Tisch said police have a “huge amount of evidence,” including “a lot of forensic evidence, fingerprints, DNA evidence,” in addition to a “huge camera screen” of the shooter's movements throughout town.
“We have every reason to believe that this was a targeted attack on an individual and not a random act of violence,” Tisch said. “We published the photo yesterday. We would appreciate if you would share the photo with your audience, as we also have reason to believe that the individual in question has left New York City.”
New York has an intensive network of presidency and personal surveillance cameras. Police and prosecutors have special teams that comb through surveillance videos to trace down suspects and match facial and physical features and clothing details.
Senior New York Police Department officials told CNN that surveillance footage showed the topic riding a bicycle from the scene of Wednesday's fatal shooting of Thompson in midtown Manhattan to Central Park after which riding a bicycle to the park near West 77th Street left.
Other footage shows this person walking along West 86th Street and Columbus Avenue before moving into a taxi that took him about five miles north to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Washington Heights, right next to the George Washington Bridge, shared the police with.
According to NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny, the person then entered the bus station.
“These buses are intercity buses,” Kenny told CNN. “That’s why we expect he might need left
New York City.
Kenny said police try to find out which bus the person could have boarded.
“We have video of him entering the Port Authority Bus Terminal. We don't have any video of him leaving, so we're assuming he could have gotten on a bus,” Kenny said.
In addition to westbound buses, the terminal also has shuttle buses that carry passengers across the George Washington Bridge across the Hudson River to Fort Lee, New Jersey and locations further west.
Law enforcement sources said Thursday that the unidentified suspect in Thompson's shooting traveled from Atlanta on a Greyhound bus that arrived in Manhattan on Nov. 24.
That was two days before UnitedHealth Group, UnitedHealthcare's parent company, announced it will host an investor day on Dec. 4 on the Hilton Hotel in Midtown.
Thompson, 50, was shot as he tried to enter the Hilton by a gunman wearing a mask or neck gaiter over his face.
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