Well the causal relation there is speculation. The thing that seems odd to me is the shooter seemingly went to great lengths to avoid sending a message - hiding their identity, issuing no public statement, etc. If this was over a denied claim that they threatened over, why bother hiding their identity? It would be trivial to figure it out based on the claim.
Then you have the fact that the shooter apparently used a silencer too and cleared a jam quickly. Seems like rather than a disgruntled nobody sending a message, this seems more like someone trying to make him go away as efficiently and quietly as possible.
So alternate theory: The victim had a lawsuit filed against him by the DOJ related to an anti-trust investigation and insider trading. What if he decided to make a deal with the DOJ, and somebody else found out and didn’t like it?
This could just be someone that practiced their firearms skills for quite awhile before making their move. Sure, they don’t seem to have left an explicit message, but that may not be necessary. If they are someone who was cheated by United, well that’s what people will assume anyway. So an explicit note/confession would serve only to provide authorities another method to track them down.
I guess it’s interesting that there’s an investigation going on, but I wouldn’t take someone’s ability to clear a jam as indication this was professional. You’d be hard-pressed to find a LEO that practice fires a tenth of the rounds that many enthusiasts in the US would blow off just for funsies. Not to mention IPSC participants where you learn to clear a jam damn fast because you’re being timed on the run.
But literally everyone got the message.
This guy killed thousands of people for profit, we don’t need to know which family wanted revenge.
I mean they’ll do an investigation. The most likely thing is a protest/revenge killing, but there are other possibilities. One I thought of - what if someone actually wanted him killed for reasons completely unrelated to him being an insurance executive? For a hypothetical example (which I have zero evidence to believe to be true), what if the wife wanted him killed for the insurance money? Maybe he was as cruel to her as he was to his customers. Maybe the wife hires a hit man to take the guy out. That hit sure looked pretty professional. Again, I have no evidence to suspect this is true. But what if? Anyone who had a motive to have the guy killed could easily try to make it look like a protest killing. And you rarely get to that level of corporate power without having a few skeletons in the closet.
That hit sure looked pretty professional.
I am not expert, but I would be cautious with calling this a professional job.
I live in Ukraine and we’ve had a wide variety of assassinations run by the russian security services. Some where clearly much more professional than this one. Others were less professional than this one, but still organized by the russian security services (this was confirmed by subsequent investigations).
