CT train stopped after report of suspected UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter on board, official says

BRIDGEPORT — Police stopped a train in Bridgeport this week after receiving a 911 call reporting a sighting of the suspect in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare's CEO on a train to Bridgeport Station, according to a city official.

Tia Josef, Bridgeport's director of public information, said law enforcement responded at 9 a.m. Thursday and walked through a train car to vet its passengers but did not identify a "person of interest." She said the train was declared safe and cleared to continue northbound.

Josef said Bridgeport police and federal law enforcement assisted Metropolitan Transit Authority police in its response to the call. She added that the caller thought they recognized clothing that matched that of the suspect in the Wednesday shooting in Manhattan.

Metropolitan Transit Authority spokesperson Ray Raimundi said Saturday that the train belonged to Amtrak and declined to comment further on the details of the stopped train, saying the agency does not have the authority to do so as part of the New York Police Department's investigation into the case.

Raimundi said Connecticut State Police also responded to the scene.

The manhunt for the shooter of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson, 50, remained ongoing as Saturday. Thompson was killed Wednesday morning in a suspected targeted shooting outside the hotel in Manhattan where the health insurer was holding its annual investor conference.

The gunman who killed the CEO of the largest U.S. health insurer may have left New York City on a bus after the shooting, police officials said Friday, according to The Associated Press, but left behind a backpack that was discovered in Central Park.

Surveillance video from the killing shows his attacker wielding a long pistol that investigators initially thought may have been tied to Connecticut. It later was determined, however, that a similar gun recently sold in Connecticut had nothing to do with the deadly shooting, the New York Times reported Friday. 

The fatal shooting has sparked renewed scrutiny of corporate executives' security, a concern that extends to Connecticut because of the presence of UnitedHealthcare and many other large companies in the state.

One simple, but noticeable, change that some companies, including UnitedHealthcare, have made since Wednesday is the removal of pages with top executives' biographies and pictures. On Google, a link to executive biographies on the website of UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare, now redirects to a page with a “page not found” message.