News Beat
ICU nurse with no criminal record who ‘cared deeply for people’: What we know about Alex Pretti, victim of DHS shooting
Federal immigration officers have shot and killed another American citizen in Minneapolis, just 17 days after they fatally shot Renee Good.
The victim of the shooting was identified as Alex Pretti, 37. He was near 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis on Saturday morning, filming DHS agents during an operation.
Open-sourced capturing the incident shows Pretti moving to assist a pair of individuals on the sidewalk near the agents, who then began pepper-spraying the group.
The victim is tackled by a group of at least five agents and dragged to the ground. The footage shows the Border Patrol agents struggling with Pretti on the ground and striking him when a gunshot is heard. A moment later, an agent fires multiple shots while Pretti is down on the pavement.
Ten shots were fired within five seconds.
Immediately after the shooting, the agents back off from Pretti’s body, and one — who appears to be holding a gun — runs away from the scene and hides behind a nearby car.
The federal government — and President Donald Trump — claims that Pretti approached agents with the intent to carry out an attack with a pistol, which they claim was recovered from the scene of the incident.
They have not provided evidence he ever drew the weapon, and have declined to answer questions offering an in-depth timeline of how the confrontation unfolded.
Carrying a licensed handgun with a permit is legal in Minnesota.
Information about the victim is limited at the moment. What is known is that Pretti lived in south Minneapolis, and his only criminal history was traffic citations, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
According to Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, Pretti was a lawful gun owner with a permit to carry a weapon.
The Department of Homeland Security issued a statement claiming that Pretti was carrying two magazines’ worth of ammunition on him and did not have an ID on his person.
Pretti’s parents reportedly told the Associated Press that Pretti worked as an ICU nurse. He obtained a nursing license in 2021, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and KARE11 confirmed that he had worked for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, which provides services, including healthcare, to U.S. military veterans.
“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,” Michael Pretti, Alex’s father, told the Associated Press. “He felt that doing the protesting was a way to express that, you know, his care for others.”
Dr Dimitri Drekonja, an infectious disease doctor and professor at the University of Minnesota, said in a post on BlueSky that he formerly worked with Pretti at the VA. He said Pretti worked to help critically ill veterans and described him as having a great attitude, and recalled often discussing taking a mountain biking trip together.
“Alex Pretti was a colleague at the VA. We hired him to recruit for our trial. He became an ICU nurse- I [loved] working with him. He was a good kind person who lived to help and these f****** executed him,” Drekonja wrote. “White. Hot. Rage.”
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz held a press conference on Saturday after the shooting, rejecting the DHS’s attempts to paint Pretti as a violent criminal and the shooting as self-defense.
“Thank God we have video, because according to DHS, these seven heroic guys took an onslaught of a battalion against them or something,” he said. “It’s nonsense, people. It’s nonsense, and it is lies.”
The Minneapolis Senate Delegation released a statement identifying Pretti as the victim in Saturday’s shooting.
“While we wait for more details, we share our deepest condolences to Alex Pretti, his family and friends, and the entire community impacted by this violence. We pledge to do everything in our power to make sure that those responsible are held accountable,” the statement says.
Democratic Senator and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also addressed Pretti’s killing, vowing to hold the agents involved criminally accountable.
“Masked and lawless DHS agents have brutally killed another American citizen in Minneapolis,” he said in a statement. “Donald Trump’s extremists have unleashed this carnage on the streets of America. They must all be held criminally accountable to the full extent of the law.”
Pretti’s killing, like Good’s, sparked widespread protest in the streets of Minneapolis.
On Saturday, MSNOW’s Alex Witt reported that she received a statement from the DHS saying it — not the FBI — would investigate the shooting. The DHS had already put out a statement claiming that Pretti was threatening to shoot federal agents and that the shooting was in self-defense.
“I’m just getting something handed to me — a statement from DHS — that it will investigate the fatal shooting of a 37-year-old protester by its officers rather than the FBI,” Witt said on the broadcast. “So they’re going to be investigating that which they already issued a summary about. It would seem like a closed book.”
