US officials defend fatal shooting as video contradicts government statement
Federal officials have defended the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by immigration agents despite video evidence contradicting the official recount of the incident.
The killing of the 37-year-old nurse was followed by conflicting accounts between the federal officials, citing agents' recollections and local witnesses who recorded the events leading to Pretti's killing on video.
According to the official account, Pretti approached feral anti-immigration agents with a loaded 9-millimeter semi-automatic handgun and two magazines.
The United States Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was quoted by ABC7 News for calling Pretti's attempt to help a woman being pushed around by masked agents as “an act of domestic terrorism.”
Gregory Bovino, the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown commander-at-large, told reporters that the agents had followed their training when faced with an armed suspect who “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”
He doubled down on his defense of officers on Sunday, saying, “The fact that they’re highly trained prevented any specific shootings of law enforcement, so good job for our law enforcement in taking him down before he was able to do that.”
However, verified video footage of the shooting from various angles shows Pretti holding a mobile phone and filming as he attempts to help a woman pushed to the ground by federal agents.
There is no video footage showing any weapon in his hand. The footage shows Pretti being pepper-sprayed and wrestled to the ground before being shot multiple times in the back.
“Everybody saw that video, and yet there he was telling you and telling the American public that this young man was brandishing a weapon, that he was impeding officers, that he was there to attend a riot, that he was engaged in assault, when everyone can see that that’s not true,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy told CNN on Sunday, sharply criticizing the Trump administration.
“It should freak the American public out that the Trump administration lies this easily, will lie to your face when you can see the evidence for yourself.”
A key piece of evidence will likely be the video from the phone Pretti was holding when he was killed. Federal officials have not yet released that footage or shared it with state investigators.
A US federal judge has issued an emergency order requiring federal authorities to preserve all evidence related to the Pretti killing by federal immigration officers.
Following a lawsuit filed by Minnesota state and local agencies barred from the killing scene, Judge Eric C. Tostrud of the US District Court for the District of Minnesota granted the temporary restraining order late Saturday night.
The judge's order forbids federal agencies, including the DHS, from "destroying or altering evidence" at the scene.
The lawsuit was filed by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) the DHS blocked state investigators from accessing the scene.
BCA Superintendent Drew Evans stated in a sworn declaration that federal agents from the DHS barred state investigators from entering the shooting scene.
The federal immigration agents continued to deny access to Evans for hours, even after the BCA obtained a search warrant signed by a Minnesota District Court judge.
The BCA superintendent stressed that in his more than 20 years of experience at the Bureau, he had never before encountered agents blocking access to a shooting scene where both federal and local jurisdiction applied.
"This is uncharted territory," Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison told reporters Sunday. "We've never had to do anything like this before."
The state's governor Tim Walz vowed to have a state investigation, blasting the federal government's accounts of Pretti's final moments as "lies".
Pretti's shooting was the third shooting involving federal immigration agents in Minneapolis in January 2026, and the second fatal incident this month.
It came on the heels of the Jan. 7 fatal shooting of Renee Good and another incident a week later when a federal officer shot a man in the leg.
Protesters continue to stage rallies in Minneapolis demanding the armed and masked federal immigration agents, who were deployed to the city to crackdown on illegal immigrants, leave the city.
Protesters also demand the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
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