Luigi Mangione graduated as valedictorian of his 2016 class at The Gilman School, an all-boys private school in North Baltimore.

Gilman is considered one of the top independent schools in the city. Founded more than a century ago, the school has educated some of the area’s most prominent business and political leaders on its sprawling campus in Roland Park.

[Live updates: Mangione shouts at reporters before hearing]

In an email to the school community, Head of School Henry P.A. Smyth said they don’t have any information beyond what’s being reported in the news.

“This is deeply distressing news on top of an already awful situation. Our hearts go out to everyone affected,” Smyth said.

Freddie Leatherbury, a high school classmate of Mangione’s from the Gilman School, said hearing the news was a “total shock.”

”He was a smart kid, he was a nice kid and he was relatively unassuming,” Leatherbury said. “He had a healthy social circle and was very well-read. He had a lot going for him.”

It’s been a “surreal” situation, Leatherbury said.

He and Mangione weren’t close friends in school, but Leatherbury said he was still upset to hear the news.”I guess he just got caught up in some ideologies after school. Something has to go pretty wrong to lead to this.”

In Gilman’s description of the 2016 graduation ceremonies, school officials described Mangione as inventive, with “incredible courage to explore the unknown and try new things.”

Speaking at the Gilman School Founder’s Day Ceremony in 2016, Mangione referenced class experiences like the school production of “The Addams Family” and beating rival McDonogh in football. In a now private video, Mangione said the class of 2016 was inventive but dedicated to the traditions of Gilman.

“Luigi is the best and deserves the best,” said Race Saunders, a former classmate of Mangione’s at Gilman.

Mangione went on to study engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, and was featured on Penn Today, the university’s news blog, for starting a club that developed video games.

”In high school, I started playing a lot of independent games and stuff like that, but I wanted to make my own game, and so I learned how to code,” Mangione, a junior at the time, said. “In my freshman and sophomore years of high school, I learned [on my own] how to program, and that’s why I’m a computer science major now; that’s how I got into it.”

The article stated that the club had about 60 students. Minutes after the news broke, the university removed the article from its site.

Mangione received a bachelor of science degree in engineering, with a major in computer science and a minor in mathematics in May 2020. He received a master of science degree in engineering at the same time, with a major in computer and information science, according to a university spokesperson.

He was also inducted into UPenn’s Eta Kappa Nu honor society for excellence in electrical and computer engineering. Mangione was also an undergraduate member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity at UPenn from 2017 to 2020, according to the national fraternity chapter.

Baltimore Banner reporters Cody Boteler, Justin Fenton and Kristen Griffith contributed to this article.