The CEO of UnitedHealthcare was fatally shot in what police said appears to be a "premeditated, preplanned targeted attack" outside the New York Hilton hotel in midtown 🇺🇸 Manhattan on Wednesday morning.
Brian Thompson, 50, was on his way to speak at UnitedHealth Group's investor conference when the gunman approached from behind and "fired several rounds," Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a news conference.
He was struck at least once in the back and at least once in the right calf, Tisch said, adding that the gunman was "lying in wait for several minutes."
"Many people passed the suspect, but he appeared to wait for his intended target," she said.
Security video shows Thompson, dressed in a blue suit, walking down the fairly quiet street. The gunman approaches him from behind and opens fire, it shows.
Thompson stumbles forward as a witness runs to safety. The gunman continues to fire as Thompson falls to the ground, the video shows.
Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said the shooter arrived at the scene about five minutes before the shooting and fired at Thompson’s back.
"The shooter then walks toward the victim and continues to shoot. It appears that the gun malfunctions as he clears the jam and begins to fire again," he said.
Three live 9 mm rounds and three discharged 9 mm shell casings were found at the scene, as well as a cellphone near the scene.
Kenny reiterated that the shooting appears to have been a targeted attack.
"The motive for this murder is currently unknown, but based on the evidence we have so far, it does appear the victim was specifically targeted," he told reporters. "But at this point, we do not know why."
Thompson, who lives in Minnesota, was pronounced dead at Mount Sinai West.
His wife, Paulette Thompson, said he had been receiving threats.
"There had been some threats," she told NBC News. "Basically, I don’t know, a lack of coverage? I don’t know details. I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him."
🇹🇩 Chad's government abruptly ended a defense cooperation agreement with former colonial power 🇫🇷 France, issuing the unexpected announcement just a few hours after a meeting of the foreign ministers of the two countries.
"After 66 years since the independence of the Republic of Chad, it is time for Chad to assert its full sovereignty, and to redefine its strategic partnerships according to national priorities," Chad's Foreign Minister Abderaman Koulamallah said in a statement late Thursday.
"This decision, taken after in-depth analysis, marks a historic turning point," he said.
The announcement came just hours after Koulamallah met with French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot in Chad's capital N'Djamena. Koulamallah said that the meeting took place without incident.
The French government has yet to comment.
Chad's decision will require French troops around a thousand are reportedly stationed there to leave the landlocked Central African country. Chad is the latest nation asking France to withdraw its forces, after Paris was forced to pull its military out of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger following military coups.
Just a few hours earlier, Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye said France should close its military bases in his country.
Faye said French President Emmanuel Macron had admitted for the first time that France was responsible for a massacre of Senegalese soldiers in 1944, as the country prepares to mark the 80th anniversary of the slaughter on Sunday.
"Senegal is an independent country; it is a sovereign country and sovereignty does not accept the presence of military bases in a sovereign country,” said Faye.
The comments from Chad and Senegal come against a backdrop of Russia's ambitions to expand its foothold on the African continent — and amid political instability.
Both Chad and Senegal reiterated that the situations in their countries are different from Niger, and their decisions do not represent a break from France.
France's foreign ministry did not immediately reply to a request for a comment.
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia has abandoned an ambitious defense agree with 🇺🇸 Washington in exchange for the normalization of relations with Israel. Now, Riyadh insists on a more modest military cooperation agreement, reports Reuters.
In a drive to get a wide-ranging mutual security treaty over the line earlier this year, Riyadh softened its position on Palestinian statehood, telling Washington that a public commitment from Israel to a two-state solution could be enough for the Gulf kingdom to normalise relations.
But with public anger in Saudi Arabia and the wider Middle East at fever pitch over Israel's military actions in Gaza, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has again made recognition of Israel conditional on it taking concrete steps to create a Palestinian state, two Saudi and three Western sources said.
Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu is still eager to secure normalisation with the Saudi powerhouse as a historic milestone and a sign of broader acceptance in the Arab world, Western diplomats said.
But he faces overwhelming opposition at home to any concessions to the Palestinians following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and knows any gesture in the direction of statehood would fracture his ruling coalition, they said.
With both leaders shackled for now by their domestic powerbases, Riyadh and Washington hope a more modest defence pact could be sealed before President Joe Biden leaves the White House in January, the sources said.
