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Luigi Mangione has been charged with first-degree murder in New York for what prosecutors say was the “grim, well-planned and targeted” killing of UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson.

Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg said the 26-year-old Ivy League graduate, who was arrested last week by local police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, has been formally charged with one count of murder in the first degree “in furtherance of terrorism”, and two counts of murder in the second degree, one of which is charged with “murder as an act of terrorism”. He also faces several lesser charges including criminal possession of a firearm.

“This was a gruesome, well-planned, targeted killing intended to shock . . . and intimidation,” Bragg told reporters on Tuesday.

The most serious charge, murder in the first degree, carries a maximum penalty of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Mangione is being held without bail in Pennsylvania and is due in court Thursday morning.

New York authorities are seeking to bring Mangione back to the city to face charges. Bragg said Mangione may waive his extradition hearing, which could see him in custody in New York by the end of the week.

The indictment returned by the grand jury — including the decision to seek a higher charge of first-degree murder — reveals the seriousness with which New York authorities approached the killing of the top executive of the nation’s largest health insurer. country, shaking up New York and corporate America.

Bragg’s office also disclosed more details of the ongoing investigation. They said Mangione, an engineering graduate, arrived in New York more than a week before Thompson’s murder, checking into an Upper West Side hostel with a fake New Jersey ID on November 24.

Mangione extended his stay at the hostel, prosecutors said, and left early on the morning of Dec. 4 to wait for Thompson outside the midtown Manhattan hotel where he was staying ahead of UnitedHealth’s investor day. Thompson was shot once in the back and once in the leg, and died after being taken to the hospital.

Mangione used a “3D printed ghost gun with a 3D printed suppressor” to shoot the executive, Bragg said. “These weapons are proliferating throughout New York City and across the country . . . as this case tragically illustrates, they are just as deadly as traditional weapons,” added Bragg.

A wave of appreciation and celebration swelled some corner of the Internet after the murder, especially about the US health care system.

“We have seen a shocking and horrific celebration of cold-blooded murder,” Jessica Tisch, commissioner of the New York Police Department, said Tuesday.

“We don’t celebrate the killings, and we don’t lionize the killing of anyone. Any attempt to justify it is vile, reckless and offensive to our deeply held principles of justice,” he added.