Yoga instructor reveals how Luigi Mangione behaved in his fitness class

A yoga instructor has detailed his personal experience with United Healthcare CEO slaying suspect Luigi Mangione, who attended his class in Hawaii.

Power Yoga's Dorian Wright detailed his run-ins with the 26-year-old Wednesday, remembering how he struggled with certain poses because of his back pain.

'I remember with him, like a lot of people that come in with injuries, they tell me right in the beginning of class or while we're doing certain poses, they'll say "Oh I can't do this,"' Wright recalled, offering the new insight to CBS News.  

'If I come to adjust them and help them they'll say "Oh I can't do this, my back,"' he remembered further, as Mangione remained cuffed in Eastern Pennsylvania for the Manhattan murder of 50-year-old Brian Thompson a week before.

'I do recall him saying something about his back.' Mangione was arrested in Altoona, a town about 100 miles west of Pittsburgh, on Monday.

The Ivy League grad's face was quickly plastered across social media, and Wright said he immediately recognized his former student when it was.

'It was like in 2023,' he said of the remote-working data engineer's stint in his class. 'We had him on our books that he came in.'

Thinking hard, Wright said, 'I remember him being a nice guy'. The account coincides with those offered by members of the Honolulu collective where Maryland-made Mangione worked while in the state, before falling of friends' and family's radar.

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'Everyone felt he was just a cool guy,' one remote worker, asking not to be named, told DailyMail.com of their time with Mangione at Hub Co-working Hawaii, painting him as a regular. 'He was very dynamic, charismatic, polite.

'He wasn't the nerdy tech type guy,' he added, as others said he often received attention from female workers at the farflung office.

'He wasn't hiding under a hoodie. He was just completely normal,' they said. Like Wright, the person remembered Mangione complaining of back issues - a potential motive investigators are looking into following the December 4 assassination.

'I never thought it was that much of an issue,' he said, recalling how the otherwise fit suspect sat in an especially cushy chair to ease his pain.

Aside from that, and the occasional odd mention, Mangione - who at the time worked as a data engineer for the vehicle-buying website called True Car - never brought his back, the source said. 

On Thursday, his former yoga teacher posted a story to Instagram expressing simultaneous regret and sympathy regarding Mangione's situation, as he now faces extradition to New York.

'You never know what kind of pain someone is going through,' he wrote over a photo of one of Mangione's mug shots following his arrest.

'Reach out to a friend today and let them know you care,' he concluded, as the the case continues to capture headlines.

A similar picture was painted by R.J. Martin, the proprietor of another Hawaii co-living and working space where Mangione spent several months the year before.

Speaking to several outlets in recent days, the owner of Honolulu's Surfbreak said he was the one to connect Mangione with Wright, after the alleged assassin aggravated the already existing back injury whilst surfing. 

'I do know that he was suffering from a spinal misalignment that had been ongoing for quite some time,' Martin revealed Wednesday, as the NYPD said fingerprints found on a water bottle and protein bar wrapper near the crime scene match ones taken from Mangione.

Wright, meanwhile, pointed out the benefits of yoga for the news stations - specifically those with a bad back. Mangione wrote on Reddit how he had spinal surgery to address the misalignment in July 2023.   

'There's a lot of postures in yoga that help lengthen the spine,' the seasoned yogi said. 'It creates longevity. It creates a calm mind.'

Following Mangione's arrest, meanwhile, some of his old friends have come forward to claim the became unhinged after the 2022 surfing injury mentioned by both men.

They said this week that Mangione dropped off the radar after aggravating the injury, and going 'absolutely crazy'

A former roommate of Mangione's told CNN : 'I remember he said he had a back issue, and he was hoping to get stronger in Hawaii . 

The experience was 'really traumatic and difficult' for him, the roommate said - adding how Mangione sent him X-ray images of his spine. 

An X-ray showing an apparent spinal injury was featured prominently on the suspect's X profile.

'It looked heinous, with just giant screws going into his spine,' Martin told the website in another interview. 

Mangione then went 'radio silent' while recovering, insiders familiar with the matter said. 

He sought alternative forms of pain management, including psychedelics and magic mushrooms.

His family - a blue-blooded clan based in Baltimore - became so concerned, they reported him missing on November 18.

He would resurface in Altoona early Monday - spotted at a McDonald's by a worker who recognized him from photos sent out by the NYPD showing his partially obscured face. 

Within hours, Mangione was charged with murder by NYC officials, as he remains jailed in Pennsylvania on firearms charges.    

The alleged killer provided cops with a fake ID when he was approached in a Pennsylvania McDonald's - one cops said matched with another provided to staffers at the hostel where is thought to have stayed in the days before the murder.    

When police asked him if he had been to New York recently, he 'became quiet and started to shake,' cops said.

In his backpack, police found a 3D-printed pistol and a 3D-printed silencer and a manifesto that reportedly expressed frustrations with the healthcare industry. 

He was also found carrying a passport and $10,000 in cash - $2,000 of it in foreign currency - which he denied was his.

Some of his friends, in the days since, have said he become radicalized after being laid off from his job at TrueCar last year and undergoing the aforementioned surgery, according to the Daily Beast.

He also went on to live for a time in Japan, seemingly falling out of contact with his commune friends and his well-heeled family in the process.

As this occurred, a slew of strange social media posts from the UPenn grad ensued, enough so that those close with Mangione had reportedly been sharing messages on expressing their worries in the weeks leading up to Thompson's killing.

Boston-based designer Daniel Collins took to X on September 7 to tell the suspect:  'Hey man I need you to call me. I don’t know if you are okay or just in a super isolated place and have no service. But I haven’t heard from you in months.

'Your made commitments to me for my wedding and if you can’t honor them I need to know so I can plan accordingly.'

On October 30, another friend wrote: 'Hey, are you ok? Nobody has heard from you in months, and apparently your family is looking for you.'

On November 26, a third X user with the name P. wrote: 'Thinking of you and prayers everyday in your name. Know you are missed and loved.'

Cops seized a handwritten manifesto from Mangione, which the NYPD's chief of detectives Joseph Kenny said expressed 'ill will toward corporate America.'

'To the Feds, I'll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country,' Mangione wrote in the three-page document. 'To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone.'

'I do apologize for any strife or traumas but it had to be done,' Mangione added in the document. 'Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.'