Witnessing Another Public Killing in Minneapolis
“They killed another guy,” someone announced in our group chat. A link to a video quickly followed, filmed from behind glass, street level. You’ve likely seen it: ICE and Border Patrol agents surrounded a young man struggling on the ground. Than, a gunshot. His body went limp.Someone near the camera shouted, “What the fuck? Did they fucking kill that guy? Are you fucking kidding me, dude? Not again! Are you fucking kidding me? That guy’s dead.”
“That guy” was Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the Veterans Management Health System. Even before his name became widely known, his killing spread rapidly on social media and the news. It echoed the aftermath of the killing—also unwarranted and public—of Renee Nicole Good on January 7th. New angles of the horror began to emerge. In the first video, a woman in a shining coat stood closer to the scene, also recording. People online wondered where the “woman in the pink coat” was.
Soon, her video surfaced. It clearly showed Pretti holding his smartphone, documenting the events. An ICE agent—wearing the typical uniform of boots, loose pants, and a sweatshirt under an olive-green bulletproof vest—had pushed a woman to the ground.Pretti, trying to help her up, was pepper-sprayed and then dragged into a circle of agents. One of the agents…