{"id":309706,"date":"2026-01-29T12:03:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T12:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/309706\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T12:03:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T12:03:07","slug":"altercation-between-alex-pretti-and-agents-11-days-before-he-was-killed-videos-show-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/309706\/","title":{"rendered":"Altercation between Alex Pretti and agents 11 days before he was killed, videos show \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Videos emerged on Wednesday of a previous confrontation between Alex Pretti <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/ice-us-immigration-and-customs-enforcement\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/ice-us-immigration-and-customs-enforcement\/\">and federal agents<\/a>, 11 days before the ICU nurse was fatally shot by federal officers in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/minneapolis\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/minneapolis\/\">Minneapolis<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">About two minutes of video, published on Wednesday by the News Movement, a digital news outlet, shows an incident on January 13th in Minneapolis in which officers appeared to grab Mr Pretti and bring him to the ground during intense community protests against the federal crackdown in the city.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It is unclear what preceded the events caught on camera, but the footage shows Mr Pretti yelling at agents in an unmarked vehicle and kicking the tail light of the car as they move away. Soon after, a heavily armed agent in tactical gear is seen exiting the car and appears to tackle Mr Pretti to the ground while other officers crowd around.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Mr Pretti appeared to break free from the officers soon after, and then stood and remained on the scene as agents left. After Mr Pretti\u2019s coat was pulled off by the officers, the News Movement video shows what appears to be a gun in his waistband. Mr Pretti, who was reported to have a permit to carry a concealed handgun, never touched it during or after the altercation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A family representative confirmed to the Guardian that it was Mr Pretti in the footage published on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Steve Schleicher, an attorney representing Mr Pretti\u2019s family, said in a statement, \u201cA week before Alex was gunned down in the street \u2013 despite posing no threat to anyone \u2013 he was violently assaulted by a group of Ice agents. Nothing that happened a full week before could possibly have justified Alex\u2019s killing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A representative for the family also said they had been aware of the incident and that Mr Pretti sustained injuries, but did not get medical care.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The Minnesota Star Tribune on Wednesday published a separate bystander video of the same incident, showing officers tackling Mr Pretti. Max Shapiro, a witness who filmed the interaction, told the newspaper: \u201cHe got slammed to the ground pretty hard.\u201d The footage ends with Mr Shapiro approaching Mr Pretti and asking if he is OK, with Mr Pretti responding: \u201cI\u2019m OK. Are we all OK? Are we all safe?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A third video of the incident, posted on YouTube the day it happened, gives a sense of the roiling anger over the immigration enforcement operation under way, with cars honking and people blowing whistles to alert their neighbours to the presence of federal agents.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Mr Pretti and the other protesters confronted federal agents that day just four blocks away from where Renee Good had been killed by an Ice officer the week before.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">All of the videos show that during the incident, agents fired tear gas and pepper balls into the crowd as they continued to hold Mr Pretti down. The chaotic footage shows other residents gathering and yelling at the officers in the aftermath. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in an email Wednesday night that they were reviewing the footage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Sahan Journal, a local outlet that covers immigrant communities, reported from the area that day that a crowd of more than 100 people had gathered to observe and protest following reports of Ice\u2019s presence in the neighbourhood.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Jacob Frey, Minneapolis\u2019s mayor, was asked about the footage at a CNN town hall and responded that he did not consider it relevant to his fatal killing 11 days later.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cI think we should be talking about the circumstances that actually led to the killing and what took place and those circumstances,\u201d the mayor said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Trump administration officials initially claimed Mr Pretti was \u201cbrandishing\u201d a gun on the day that he was killed and intended to \u201cmassacre\u201d officers \u2013 claims that were contradicted by video that showed him holding a phone, not a gun.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThe sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting,\u201d Mr Pretti\u2019s family said in a statement shortly after he was killed. \u201cAlex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump\u2019s murdering and cowardly Ice thugs &#8230; Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.\u201d \u2013 Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Videos emerged on Wednesday of a previous confrontation between Alex Pretti and federal agents, 11 days before the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,356,13,14,6,70180,11,12,15,16,23477,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-309706","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-ice-us-immigration-and-customs-enforcement","15":"tag-latest-news","16":"tag-latestnews","17":"tag-main-news","18":"tag-mainnews","19":"tag-minneapolis","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topstories","23":"tag-world","24":"tag-world-news","25":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115978292699718263","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}