A security expert has described the signs which he believes indicates that the person who killed a health insurance CEO in New York was not a professional hitman.
50-year-old Brian Thompson was assassinated yesterday (4 December) morning as he left his hotel in New York City, with police calling it a ‘brazen, targeted attack’.
Police said the shooter appeared to be waiting outside the hotel where Thompson was staying and let other people pass by before he went up to the 50-year-old and shot him three times.
The shooter had a hood up and was wearing a mask which covered a portion of his face, however, CCTV footage has allowed investigators to track some of his movements before and after the shooting.
Images from surveillance footage showed the man wearing a hooded jacket and a grey backpack.
Police are investigating a number of items recovered from the scene, including a water bottle and phone (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Speaking to LADbible, security expert Will Geddes explained that there were parts of the assassination which made him think the person who pulled the trigger wasn’t very ‘professional’.
“There’s a couple of things which indicate that it wasn’t a highly professional job,” he explained.
“The assassin left some forensic treasure, he left a candy wrapper, a phone and a water bottle, which the police are attributing to the assassin.
“If you were an assassin, you wouldn’t leave any kind of evidence that could be taken off or associated to you.”
Investigators are running DNA analysis on a water bottle and other items recovered at the scene, and Geddes said that DNA evidence would be ‘the key thing’ in identifying the killer.
Security expert Will Geddes said certain aspects of the assassination indicated it ‘wasn’t a highly professional job’ (CNN)
The security expert added that the killer’s apparent escape from the scene of the assassination did appear to have been planned out, with the killer running into an alleyway before getting onto a bike and riding it into Central Park.
He said: “Using the bike was a good drill. You know, you can move places, different directions, you can go opposite ways, up roads on a bicycle than you can in a car or a motorcycle.
“Going into Central Park was a good drill. There’s probably a very good chance he had another layer of clothing underneath what he was wearing.
“He had a backpack, which I would say, was probably used for once he got into the park, probably to take all those clothes off, put them into the layer underneath, put that outer layer into the backpack, and then have various options to leave the park by.
“The getaway was good but the execution of the assassination was bad, was not highly professional.”
The shooter wore clothing which concealed much about their identity, but Geddes said they may have left behind DNA evidence (NYPD)
Geddes also said that the killer’s handling of the weapon ‘wouldn’t be what I would call professional’.
He explained that a professional killer would likely ‘walk up right close behind him, probably put the end of the barrel to the bottom of the skull and pull the trigger’.
“He discharged three shots into the principal, into the target,” Geddes said.
“There was no head shot. If you are a professional you’re being paid for this task, it would be a clean headshot, at least one to make sure that the target was dead.”
While he pointed towards DNA evidence as the police’s best avenue of identifying the shooter, there was one other feature about the killer which he said could potentially help investigators pick up the killer’s trail on CCTV even if they’d changed their outfit, as ‘the one thing that people rarely change is their shoes’.
