The Trump administration is in deep embarrassment after several videos analyzed by the American media and two witnesses appear to contradict the official version of the Department of Homeland Security, according to which Pretti “approached Border Patrol agents with a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol” and “violently resisted” when they tried to disarm him.
The man with the phone in his hand: videos of the shooting
Various shots of the shooting, however, first show the man with a phone in his hand (and not with a gun), filming federal agents in the middle of a snowy street, then focusing on one of them pushing a woman away and making another fall. Pretti intervenes between the officer and the women, tries to defend one of them, then raises his left arm to protect himself while the officer sprays him with pepper spray. Then he is blocked and pinned to the ground by a group of at least five federal police, while someone shouts what sounds like a warning about the presence of a weapon.
The shots, the “rue and run”. There are two eyewitnesses
A video then appears to show one of the officers taking a gun from Pretti’s waistband and walking away from the group with it. A few moments later, a colleague with a gun pointed at Pretti’s back fires four shots in rapid succession. In a rapid sequence other shots are heard while another officer appears to hit Pretti. A general stampede ensues, including the feds, no one helps. There are also two eyewitnesses: in a sworn statement they declared that the man was not brandishing a weapon.
One is a woman who filmed the clearest video of the shooting; the other is a 29-year-old doctor who lives nearby. “The officers – he testified – threw the man to the ground. I didn’t see him touch any of them, he wasn’t even facing them. He didn’t seem to be trying to resist, he was just trying to help a woman get up. I didn’t see him with a gun. They threw him to the ground. Four or five officers held him on the ground and started shooting at him.” The second witness stated that he saw the tragedy from the window of his apartment near the scene. Before the shooting, he said he saw Pretti yelling at the officers, but “I didn’t see him attack them or brandish any type of weapon.” When he attempted to provide aid, he was initially prevented, the doctor continued, reporting that the victim had at least three gunshot wounds to his back, as well as one to his upper left chest and another possible wound to his neck.
Ten shots fired
A frame taken from a video on January 24 in Minneapolis, viral on social networks and then reposted by Drop Site, shows a moment of the action of American federal agents that led to the killing of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, 37 years old, an intensive care nurse at the government department for veterans. In the center of the frame, in the red circle, you can see the federal agent who fires the first shot. But ten shots were fired, emerges from the analysis of the videos released of those excited moments, as also reported by various media including the BBC and the New York Times. The origin of the shots is unclear, but the BBC’s description of the images underlines that, when “the officers suddenly move away from the man lying on the ground, the shooting continues” and “a total of 10 gunshots are heard”.
“He has a gun”
A video analysis conducted by CNN on the Minneapolis tragedy appears to show a federal immigration agent taking a gun away from Alex Pretti shortly before the agents fatally shoot him. The video shows an officer wading into the fray of other officers trying to restrain Pretti and recovering a weapon that appears to match the gun the man possessed, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The officers can be heard shouting “he has a gun” as the unidentified officer reaches into Pretti’s waistband and his colleagues try to restrain him. Just over a second after the officer emerges holding the weapon, a shot is heard, followed by at least 9 more, according to the videos. The videos show that the officer who recovered the weapon had nothing in his hand before approaching Pretti. From the videos examined by CNN it is not clear whether the officer who took the weapon from Pretti warned the other officers that he had stolen it. It is not even clear which officer shot Pretti first.