Very high tension again in Minneapolis after a federal agent shot dead Alex Jeffrey Pretti yesterday, 37 year old American citizen. According to the US government, the man approached armed and with hostile intentions, but the videos seem to contradict the federal officials’ version. “Let our patriots at ICE do their job,” Trump wrote in Truth. The family of the murdered man: ‘Repugnant lies from the government’.
Video Man killed in Minneapolis, in a video the moments before the shooting
The former Democratic president intervenes harshly in the case Barack Obama. “The killing of Alex Pretti is a heartbreaking tragedy. It should also be a wake-up call for every American, regardless of party affiliation, as many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under attack.” “Federal forces – he writes in a note – and immigration agents have a difficult job. But Americans expect them to carry out their duties legally and responsibly and to collaborate with state and local authorities, rather than acting against them, to ensure public safety. This is not what we are seeing in Minnesota.”
Ma Greg Bovinoil commander of the Ice who is leading the anti-immigrant fight in the USA, speaking on CNN, praised the federal agents who killed Pretti. “They are the victims,” he said, claiming that Pretti “was there for a reason”, without however giving more detailed explanations, but supporting the Department of Homeland Security’s thesis according to which the man was at the anti-ICE protest “to massacre law enforcement officers”.
Il Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Freyannounced that he had formally requested assistance from the National Guard to support Minneapolis Police Department officers. The mayor said the community is tired and more support is needed. He then added that he understands that people are angry and experiencing trauma. “This has been going on for weeks now,” he said, adding that only “our city will suffer if there is damage or destruction.”
ANSA AgencyGavin Newsom, Democratic governor of Californiacalled for the resignation of Kristi Noem from her role as Homeland Security secretary and the firing of Gregory Bovino, a top U.S. Border Patrol official who has led anti-immigration operations across the country. “Kristi Noem must RESIGN. Greg Bovino needs to be FIRED. IMMEDIATELY suspend ILLEGAL mass deportation raids across the country: ICE is no longer deporting only dangerous criminals. Send the Border Patrol back to the border. End the militarization of ICE and sick racism,” the governor wrote on
Both Noem and Bovino said that Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old killed in Minneapolis, “approached U.S. Border Patrol agents with a 9mm semiautomatic pistol,” a circumstance contradicted by video evidence and witnesses.
The governor of Minnesota Tim Walz announced that the state will conduct its own investigation into Pretti’s killing. Axios writes this, specifying that it is the second time this month that local law enforcement agencies have denounced the refusal of federal agencies to cooperate in the investigation into the death of a state resident at the hands of federal officials. Walz said he told the White House that the state justice system “must have the final say” because “the federal government cannot be trusted to handle the investigation.”
The images arriving from Minneapolis and the reconstruction of the events following Pretti’s killing lead to an increase in headlines and analyzes in the American and US media – including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Guardian – which evoke scenarios of an internal conflict within America unprecedented in recent decades and a climate of potential “civil war”.
In an affidavit, an anonymous eyewitness who recorded video of the shooting says he did not see Alex Pretti with a gun before he was shot by Ice officers. The Guardian writes this, citing a document published by the American Immigration Council, an NGO for the defense of migrants’ rights. The witness states that Pretti tried to help a woman who had been pushed to the ground when he was grabbed by other ICE agents. He didn’t seem to resist, he says: “I didn’t see him with a gun. They threw him to the ground and started shooting at him.”
The type of weapon the Department of Homeland Security says Pretti was carrying when he was shot and killed by Ice agents is a 9mm Sig Sauer P320. a “popular and frequently carried pistol by the U.S. military and law enforcement”. The Minnesota Star Tribune writes this, underlining that although Pretti had a gun licence, it has not yet been proven that the weapon shown in an image published on social media by the Department was actually his. The Minneapolis newspaper also notes, “Federal agents, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), also carry P320s, as do many state and local law enforcement officers.”
“We had this conversation with him about two weeks ago, we told him to go and protest, but not to get involved, not to do anything stupid.” said Michael Pretti. “And he said he knew it. He knew it,” she continued.
Video The video of the shooting in Minneapolis
The videos analyzed by the New York Times seem to contradict federal officials’ versions of the Minneapolis tragedyaccording to which Alex Jeffrey Pretti approached Border Patrol agents with a gun and the intent to “massacre” them. The footage, writes the NYT, instead shows Pretti interposing himself between a woman and an officer who is spraying her with pepper spray. Other officers then sprayed the same spray against Pretti, who was holding a phone in one hand and nothing in the other, and knocked him down. As the videos show, his weapon was found only after he had been pinned down on the sidewalk. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem reiterated the Trump administration’s support for the Border Patrol agent involved in a deadly shooting in Minneapolis, and placed blame for the incident on the victim, Alex Pretti, calling his behavior “violent” before he was killed.
Noem declared during a press conference at the headquarters of Fema (the US civil defense) in Washington that “an individual approached US Border Patrol agents with a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol. The agents attempted to disarm this person, but the armed suspect reacted violently. Fearing for his life and that of his colleagues, an agent fired defensive shots”.
Noem said Pretti was “pronounced dead at the scene,” noting that he “had two magazines with ammunition that contained dozens of bullets” and had no identification on him. According to Noem, “it looks like a situation where an individual has arrived on the scene to inflict maximum harm on people and kill law enforcement.”
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