A new video published on social media contradicts the Department of Homeland Security’s account of why federal agents killed 37-year-old Minneapolis man Alex Pretti in broad daylight on Saturday.
The graphic video, which was uploaded by Drop Site News, shows Pretti appearing to direct traffic and film federal agents on his phone. Soon after, he appears to be pepper-sprayed and wrestled to the ground by multiple agents. About a half-dozen agents are on top of Pretti or in his immediate vicinity when he is initially shot. The gunshots continue after Pretti is on the ground.
The video published by Drop Site makes clear that Pretti was not holding a weapon in the lead-up to the shooting, or when federal agents forcefully took him to the ground.
The video, along with others recorded from different angles, refute the more than 150-word account of the shooting that DHS published on social media on Saturday afternoon. In that statement, DHS claimed that “an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun.”
DHS has tried to back that up by saying Pretti had a handgun on him at the time, sharing a photo of it in the same social media post. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said on Saturday that Pretti appeared to be a licensed gun owner. But the video published by Drop Site makes clear that he was not holding a weapon in the lead-up to the shooting, or when federal agents forcefully took him to the ground. Instead, he only appears to be holding his phone to record the situation.
DHS also tried to make what happened appear akin to an active shooter situation by claiming that “this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” That is directly refuted by the video uploaded by Drop Site that was recorded in the immediate vicinity of the shooting, which makes clear that Pretti was peacefully observing the federal agents who approached him and later tackled him. There is no indication based on the available video evidence that he tried to harm federal agents, much less inflict “maximum damage” or “massacre” people.
Contrary to Bovino’s claims, there is no reason to believe that the Trump administration will conduct a legitimate investigation of Saturday’s shooting.
Border Patrol official Greg Bovino stuck to DHS’s story in a Saturday afternoon press conference, saying that Pretti approached agents with a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun. Bovino then deflected two questions about when agents learned Pretti had a gun and whether he brandished it at them. Instead, he said that the situation is “evolving” and would be investigated “just like we have done over the past several years.”
Contrary to Bovino’s claims, there is no reason to believe that the Trump administration will conduct a legitimate investigation of Saturday’s shooting. After Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross killed Renée Good earlier this month in Minneapolis by shooting her at point-blank range, the Trump administration tried to investigate Good’s partner, rather than Ross. That decision led to the resignation of multiple federal prosecutors in Minnesota. On Friday, the New York Times reported that FBI agent Tracee Mergen has also resigned after “bureau leadership in Washington pressured her to discontinue a civil rights inquiry” of Ross.
DHS has been caught in countless lies under Donald Trump. Last year, it falsely claimed that all of the more than 200 Venezuelans it sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison were members of the criminal organization Tren de Aragua. That was refuted by reporting from Mother Jones and multiple outlets, but DHS never backed down from its lies about the Venezuelan men and ignored repeated requests asking for evidence to support its false claims.
Earlier in January, the Trump administration accused Good of “domestic terrorism” after Ross killed Good. Video analysis of the encounter by the Times shows Good trying to drive away from masked federal agents, not run them over, as the administration claimed.
Even Trump retreated from his initial hardline stance after it became clear that Americans were not buying the administration’s lies about Good. On Tuesday, he called Good’s killing a “tragedy” and added that immigration agents are sometimes “going to make a mistake.”
