Video of skateboarder falsely claimed to show Luigi Mangione
- Published on December 17, 2024 at 17:46
- 6 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
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"Video of Luigi Mangione showing off his skating skills have surfaced," says a December 16, 2024 post on Instagram.
The post, which shows a man jumping a parking lot fence on a skateboard, received more than 88,000 views on the platform. Similar posts ricocheted across Instagram and several other sites, including X, Threads, Reddit and YouTube.
"Is there anything he can't do!?" says text over another widely viewed post referencing Mangione on TikTok.
The posts come after police charged Mangione with murder over the December 4 shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a New York City street.
The incident has exposed widespread public frustration with the US medical system, with many internet users sharing jokes and venting about the largely private setup. It has also led to some scattered celebration of Mangione, an Ivy League university graduate from a wealthy Baltimore-area family whose social media footprint included shirtless pictures, an X-ray of an apparently injured spine and a review of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski's manifesto.
The man in the skateboarding video, however, is not Mangione.
Reverse image searches surfaced the original clip on the Instagram page of Guy Azulay, a skateboarder and musician (archived here). Azulay posted it December 12 -- days after Mangione was arrested in a McDonald's restaurant in the state of Pennsylvania.
AFP geolocated Azulay's video to a parking lot in Costa Mesa, California (archived here). The lot sits off Bristol Street behind a dry cleaning service, Japanese cafe, massage parlor, sports bar, Chevron gas station and Hilton hotel.
PimEyes, a facial recognition tool, also matched the face in the skateboarding video to other publicly available photos of Azulay (archived here, here and here).
Still, numerous comments on Azulay's post addressed the skateboarder's resemblance to Mangione. Azulay appeared to get in on the joke December 16 on his Instagram story, where he shared another user's post referring to him as "Luigi."
AFP contacted Azulay via Instagram direct message for comment. No response was forthcoming, but the skateboarder told TMZ on December 16 that it was "weird" and "funny" that "of all things to blow up, it's just because I look like someone else" (archived here).
"I don't see harm coming from it," Azulay told the tabloid. "I think it's insane that people think it's actually him."
He said he has been told -- including during a recent grocery store visit -- that he looks like Mangione. But he added that although his social media following has grown, "I don't think that that is what I want to do with my life is be a Luigi doppelgänger."
AFP has debunked other misinformation about the UnitedHealthcare executive's killing here.
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