Yesterday, a chilling video capturing the fatal shooting of nurse Alex Pretti by a border force agent in Minneapolis garnered international attention and scrutiny.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security declared that the agent discharged “defensive shots” when Mr. Pretti allegedly approached with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun, labeling him as a “domestic terrorist.”
However, eyewitness accounts and video footage are raising questions about the official narrative. Witnesses assert Mr. Pretti was holding a camera, not a weapon, challenging the department’s assertion of an immediate threat to the officers.
According to the DHS, officers feared for their safety, prompting them to act as Mr. Pretti “brandished” a firearm. Yet, newly analyzed footage, which has been slowed and stabilized, suggests a different sequence of events, showing an officer taking the handgun and walking away with it before the nurse was shot.
The confrontation unfolded outside Glam Doll Donuts on 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue, where Mr. Pretti was reportedly involved in a tussle with federal immigration agents. The video shows four masked agents wrestling him to the ground, with two more joining as punches were thrown.
Amidst the chaos, several gunshots were fired, causing the agents to back off, leaving Mr. Pretti motionless on the ground. Tragically, he was declared dead at the scene.
The clip begins after Mr Pretti, a nurse for the intensive care unit at the Veterans Affairs hospital, has already been pepper-sprayed and forced to his knees.
Multiple DHS agents are seen surrounding him, struggling to restrain his arms and legs as he is pushed face-down on to the pavement.
Alex Pretty holds his hand up as he is pepper-sprayed
He is shoved to the ground by border force agents
An officer tried to snatch the gun that Pretti was carrying
He carries off the 37-year-old’s weapon
After more scuffled, an agent points a gun at Pretti’s back
Border Force troops surround the motionless body of Pretti after he was killed in Minneapolis on Saturday
As four agents remain engaged in the struggle, one officer, wearing a grey jacket and a pink rimmed baseball cap, appears to reach into the back waistband of Mr Pretti’s trousers and pull out a handgun. He then moves away from the group, holding the weapon but amid the confusion another is heard asking: ‘Where is the gun?’
Within an instant, another agent draws his firearm and fires directly into Mr Pretti’s back. Agents are then seen backing away as additional shots ring out. Roughly ten shots appear to be fired.
A separate video also contradicts the claims of the DHS. In it Mr Pretti, dressed in a black cap, tan coat and trousers, is seen standing in the middle of the road with his phone in his hand. Minutes later, a woman in a white coat is shoved into the snow before he steps in and is sprayed with pepper-spray.
His attempts to shield the woman see him wrestled to the ground by the officers before more join in and try to restrain him.
‘The f*** is wrong with you?’ a man behind the camera is heard saying before gunshots ring out and onlookers scream.
The DHS said officers rushed to quickly administer first aid, although this is disputed by a doctor who witnessed the aftermath from his nearby apartment.
The unidentified paediatrician claims the agents appeared to be ‘counting his bullet wounds’ instead of administering CPR.
And a woman in a pink coat next to Mr Pretti in the footage provided sworn testimony on Saturday night.
Harrowing video footage of nurse Alex Pretti, pictured, being shot dead by a border force agent in Minneapolis was being studied across the world yesterday
Federal agents stand amid teargas near the site where a man, identified as Mr Pretti was fatally shot by armed police trying to detain him, in Minneapolis, Minnesota
‘I didn’t see him with a gun,’ she said. ‘They threw him to the ground. Four or five agents had him on the ground and they just started shooting him.’
The officer who shot Mr Pretti is an eight-year Border Patrol veteran, federal officials said. The agent’s identity has not yet been made public.
Mr Pretti’s family have hit out at the US government’s framing of his death and branded his killers ‘murdering and cowardly thugs’.
‘The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting,’ they said in a statement.
‘Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly… thugs. Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.’
