MINNEAPOLIS — A federal immigration agent shot and killed a 37-year-old Minneapolis man Saturday, the second such fatal shooting this month, inflaming a state on edge after the shooting death of Renee Good and a series of high-profile detentions, including of children.
The man killed, identified by family as Alex Jeffrey Pretti, was an intensive care nurse.
“He cared about people deeply and he was very upset with what was happening in Minneapolis and throughout the United States with ICE, as millions of other people are upset,” his father, Michael Pretti, told The Associated Press. “He felt that doing the protesting was a way to express that, you know, his care for others.”
Like the aftermath of Good’s death, the circumstances around Pretti’s final moments were caught on multiple eyewitness videos and quickly devolved into dueling narratives between immigration officials and state and local leaders about whether the actions of the federal agent were justified.
Pretti’s shooting, captured on a video posted to Facebook and verified by NBC News, was followed by a heated confrontation between officers and protesters who oppose the federal government’s immigration enforcement tactics.
In the video, agents are seen wrestling a man to the ground. A second cellphone video appears to show the moments leading to the shooting, which include Pretti appearing to come to the aid of a person who had been pushed to the ground by immigration agents. Several people are seen in the street filming immigration agents when an officer appears to shove someone to the ground. An officer appears to spray Pretti in the face before dragging him to the ground. Several agents surround Pretti when a series of shots are fired.
In its original statement, the Department of Homeland Security said that its officers were conducting a targeted immigration operation when they were approached by an armed Minneapolis resident.
The department said the man was shot after violently resisting efforts to disarm him, but no evidence was provided to back up this account. It said the agent who shot him feared for his life and the lives of the other officers and “fired defensive shots.”
Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino said the officer who fired the shots had been serving as a Border Patrol agent for eight years, with “extensive training as a range safety officer and less lethal officer.”
Later, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declined to say whether Pretti pulled out a gun before the federal agent shot him.
Speaking at a news conference about the winter storm, Noem questioned why an individual would bring a gun to a protest.
“I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign,” Noem said.
It is legal to carry a gun in Minnesota, and Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said earlier today that Pretti legally owned a weapon.
Man’s family told him to be careful protesting
His death comes after federal authorities surged more than 3,000 immigration agents into the state. By comparison, the Minneapolis Police Department has about 600 sworn officers.
The state’s attorney general on Saturday called their presence “unconstitutional” and said that on Monday his office would seek to oust immigration agents from Minnesota.
Minneapolis police received a report of a shooting just before 9 a.m. and found a man with gunshot wounds, O’Hara said.
He said he believes more than one federal agent fired shots.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who has been vocal in his criticism of the federal immigration enforcement operation, repeated calls to end the action.
“I just saw a video of more than six masked agents pummeling one of our constituents and shooting him to death,” he said. “How many more residents, how many more Americans, need to die or get badly hurt for this operation to end?”
Frey contrasted the fatal shooting by an immigration agent with actions of Minnesota residents a day earlier. On Friday, some 15,000 people took to the streets to oppose immigration agents’ presence in the state. There was “not a single broken window, not a single injury,” Frey said.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is investigating the shooting.
Pretti, born in Illinois, had participated in protests in the city following the killing of Good, the AP reported.
His parents, who live in Wisconsin, said they had told him to be careful protesting.
“We had this discussion with him two weeks ago or so, you know, that go ahead and protest, but do not engage, do not do anything stupid, basically,” his father told The AP. “And he said he knows that. He knew that.”
Pretti’s family said that he owned a handgun and had a permit, but said they had never known him to carry the firearm.
His parents rejected the account of the shooting provided by the Department of Homeland Security.
“Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs,” they said in a statement released through the Minnesota DFL. “He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper sprayed.”
Jeanne Wiener, one of Pretti’s neighbors, said she’s known him for about five years and described him as a “gentle, good person.”
“He would never, ever attack a police officer,” she told NBC News.
The fatal shooting on Saturday came amid turmoil within the Department of Justice over the course of the investigation involving the officer who shot Good.
Two federal law enforcement sources told NBC News that DHS would take the lead on investigating Pretti’s shooting with the Justice Department and the FBI assisting.
It is a shift from standard procedure and raises questions about whether there will be a criminal civil rights investigation. Normally, the FBI would take the lead in a shooting involving a DHS officer, and there would be a parallel internal Customs and Border Protection Office of Professional Responsibility investigation.
The news comes after six prosecutors and an FBI agent involved in the probe tied to Good’s shooting have resigned. NBC News has reported that the prosecutors resigned over concerns about the direction of the investigation.
Protesters clash with officers
Within minutes of the shooting, dozens of protesters swarmed the area.
For the next several hours, federal officers sporadically deployed tear gas that enveloped the surrounding streets, threw pepper bombs and used pepper spray. In one instance, an agent set a trash bin on fire with a smoke bomb after a protester tried to use it to block the street.
Protesters hurled expletives and, at times, threw snowballs at authorities’ vehicles.
Wiping off tear gas and pepper spray, demonstrators sought shelter from the chemicals and the bitter cold inside local businesses.
At least one protester was seen on an NBC News video being taken to the ground and placed in handcuffs after law enforcement started to move demonstrators from the scene. The protester’s face appeared bloodied when law enforcement picked him up.
Minneapolis residents said they were frustrated and angry about the continued violence.
“It just really infuriates me because they’re going to try to keep coming and they’re going to keep hurting people and we have to keep on standing up,” said Andrew Collier.
“We can’t let them get comfortable with what they’re doing,” Collier added. “And that means showing up whenever they do something terrible like this, or anytime they’re in our streets.”
Elisabeth Pletcher, 57, opened the doors to a nearby yoga studio where she works to let protesters take cover. Dozens gathered inside, some wiping tear gas out of their eyes, watching the scene unfold outside.
“It’s absolutely atrocious. It is absolutely counter to everything that should be happening in the world,” she said. “We can be using these resources to feed people and to educate people and to take care of each other, and instead they are sowing fear and violence.”
Brennan Gasser, 34, lives in an apartment above the site of the shooting, at the intersection of Nicolette Avenue and 26th Street in south Minneapolis. Gasser ran out of bed about 9 a.m. when he heard whistles coming from outside.
A few moments later, he said he saw about a dozen federal agents surrounding a man face-down on the ground before paramedics flipped his body to perform CPR.
He said that while he did not see the shooting, the fact that the man was armed should not justify a shooting.
“In my opinion, in this circumstance, we have the right to bear arms,” he said. “If you had a weapon and they shot him because he was holding a weapon, that’s extremely unjust. People who support the other side should see that if you own a gun, it’s not cause to be shot dead in the streets.”
Gov. Tim Walz said videos of Pretti’s shooting were “sickening” and demanded that the state lead the investigation into the incident.
“As I’ve told the White House in no uncertain terms this morning, the federal government cannot be trusted to lead this investigation. The state will handle it, period,” he said at a news conference.
People in the city have been protesting since Jan. 7, when Good was shot and killed in her car during an encounter with ICE agent Jonathan Ross. An autopsy commissioned by her family found that she suffered three gunshot wounds, including one to the head. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office has not yet released its findings to Good’s family or their legal team, their attorneys said in a statement.
About a week after Good’s death, a Venezuelan man was injured in a shooting involving a federal officer in Minneapolis. DHS said the shooting happened after law enforcement was attacked with a shovel and broom during a targeted traffic stop.