An x-ray image apparently posted on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) by the suspect in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has gone viral, spurring wide speculation about potential motives in the case.
Luigi Mangione, 26, was arrested in Altoona, PA, and charged with murder over the December 4 shooting of Thompson in New York City.
The x-ray shows a “lumbar spine with posterior spinal instrumentation, possible fusion,” according to Zeeshan Sardar, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at Columbia University Medical Center, the Washington Post reported. The image shows four screws in a spine.
In addition, a producer and researcher who met Mangione in Hawaii in 2022 reportedly said that it was her understanding that he had a lifelong back injury and on the website Goodreads, an account associated with Mangione’s name listed books related to back procedures, according to the article.
The New York Post also posted the image, stating that unnamed sources suggest Mangione may have held a grudge against the UnitedHealthcare executive because of his interactions with the medical industry.
On X, the top post containing the x-ray image speculated that chronic back pain may have affected Mangione’s mental health, with the post receiving 10 million views and hundreds of responses.
![Representative example of a 16-year-old male patient with underlying X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy. (A, B) Paired anteroposterior (AP) chest radiograph and dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) report shows lumbar spine (L1 through L4) areal bone mineral density (BMD). The DXA report was reformatted for anonymization and improved readability. The patient had low BMD (Z score ≤ −2.0). (C) Model (chest radiography [CXR]–BMD) output shows the predicted raw BMD and Z score in comparison with the DXA reference standard, together with interpretability analyses using Shapley additive explanations (SHAP) and gradient-weighted class activation maps. The patient was classified as having low BMD, consistent with the reference standard. AM = age-matched, DEXA = dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry, RM2 = room 2, SNUH = Seoul National University Hospital, YA = young adult.](https://img.auntminnie.com/mindful/smg/workspaces/default/uploads/2026/04/ai-children-bone-density.0snnf2EJjr.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&dpr=2&fit=crop&h=167&q=70&w=250)
