The Department of Homeland Security has claimed that Alex Jeffrey Pretti intended to attack law enforcement
According to allegations from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Alex Jeffrey Pretti, who was fatally shot by US Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis, was armed and appeared to have planned to cause the greatest possible harm to law enforcement officers.
Pretti, a US citizen and an intensive care nurse with the Department of Veterans Affairs, died during a confrontation with federal agents on Saturday. The DHS stated he was in possession of a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun and two magazines, and was not carrying identification.
“This appears to be a scenario where a person intended to inflict maximum damage and massacre law enforcement,” the DHS stated. The department released a photograph of a firearm and a magazine that it alleges Pretti had with him.
Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino reported that the agents discharged “defensive shots” after Pretti “violently resisted” their efforts to take his weapon.
At 9:05 AM CT, as DHS law enforcement officers were conducting a targeted operation in Minneapolis against an illegal alien wanted for violent assault, an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun, seen here.
The officers attempted to…
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov)
Bovino explained that the agents were carrying out an operation to arrest an unrelated undocumented immigrant when Pretti came toward them. The DHS reported that approximately 200 “rioters” subsequently gathered at the location and impeded the work of immigration officials.
A newly released, unsettling video from the incident depicts Pretti, seemingly holding his phone, approaching an agent who had just pushed a bystander into the snow. The agent uses pepper spray on Pretti and seizes his hand. Additional agents then join in, restraining Pretti on the ground, after which gunshots are audible.
In a statement provided to CNN on Saturday, Pretti’s family asserted that he was “clearly not holding a gun” when the agents confronted him. “He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down, all while being pepper-sprayed,” the family’s statement said.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey placed responsibility for the shooting on the federal agents and demanded that President Donald Trump remove them from the city.
“If the objective was to establish peace and safety, this is achieving the complete opposite,” Frey stated during a news conference, calling on the administration to terminate the federal operation and pull out the officers. “The invasion of these heavily armed masked agents roaming around on our streets, emboldened with a sense of impunity, it has to end,” he added.
Today, we lost another Minneapolis neighbor after multiple ICE agents pummeled him and shot him to death.
How many more people need to die or get shot before this ends?
President Trump, I am calling on you to put the American people and this American city first & get ICE out.
— Mayor Jacob Frey (@MayorFrey)
Governor Tim Walz denounced what he described as a “federal occupation” of Minnesota and insisted that state authorities should take charge of the investigation into the event.