Police in Michigan said they’re looking into whether the stabbing of a manufacturing company’s president during a meeting this week may have been motivated by the recent killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO in New York.
A 32-year-old employee was taken into custody on aggravated assault charges after allegedly stabbing the president of Anderson Express Inc. on Tuesday in Muskegon, Michigan, police said in a release.
“We haven’t ruled out [a] copycat motive in regards to this,” Fruitport Police Deputy Chief Greg Poulson told News 8 of the violence potentially being connected to the fatal shooting in New York. “I think that comes to everyone’s mind at this time.”
An employee at Anderson Express in Muskegon, Michigan, is accused of stabbing the company’s president during a staff meeting on Tuesday.
Police said the employee, identified by local news media as Nathan Mahoney, stabbed company president Erik Denslow in the side with a knife just before 9:30 a.m. He then fled the business in a car but was tracked down and stopped by police just minutes later.
Denslow underwent surgery at a local hospital. He was last listed as being in serious but stable condition, said police, who did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment on Friday.
Mahoney had been hired by the company just two weeks prior. The company planned to train him to replace another employee in a high position who was retiring in two years, Poulson told News 8.
Anderson Express specializes in creating casts of tools and prototypes, according to its website. Denslow joined the company in 2022 as vice president and general manager and just a year later rose in the ranks to president, according to his LinkedIn page.
A company representative did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment Friday.
Mahoney remained in custody Friday on a $500,000 bond, jailhouse records show.
The stabbing came nearly two weeks after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot outside of a midtown Manhattan hotel.
Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing Thompson, had a vendetta against the health insurance industry and wealthy executives, federal prosecutors said in a criminal complaintagainst him.
Mangione viewed health insurance companies as “parasitic” and motivated by greed and power, according to a law enforcement bulletin citing a handwritten document found on him during his arrest last week.
