ICE agent’s gun ‘mishap’ may have led to Alex Pretti’s killing
The nurse who was shot and killed by ICE agents after being disarmed may have been shot after officers mistakenly fired his gun.
Alex Pretti, 37, was protesting ICE agents in Minneapolis and filming officers when they saw he was conceal carrying a weapon, which is legal in Minnesota.
Video showed officers disarming him and beating him up, before firing ten shots into him, believing he was ‘armed’, according to the DHS.
It’s now been revealed that the ICE agents may have shot him multiple times after accidentally firing Pretti’s own gun after they confiscated it.
As an agent was seen backing away from the scene with Pretti’s pistol, it appeared to fire, which may have ‘spooked’ other agents and caused them to gun down the unarmed nurse.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said yesterday that Pretti was conceal carrying a handgun, which he was legally permitted to do under state law.
President of the Minnesota Gun Owners Law Centre, Rob Doar, wrote on social media that he thinks Pretti died because of a mistake made by an ICE agent.
‘After analysing the videos, I believe it’s highly likely the first shot was a negligent discharge from the agent in the grey jacket after he removed the Sig P320 from Pretti’s holster while exiting the scene,’ he said.
Doar isn’t alone in his thinking – in fact, it’s backed up by science. A phenomenon known as ‘contagious fire’ shows that police officers are 11 times more likely to shoot if they already hear gunfire, mistaken or not.
Pretti’s murder has pushed Minnesotans over the edge, as they fight to remove ICE from their cities.
President Donald Trump, on the other hand, has claimed the shooting was ‘justified’ and defended the agents involved.
He’s also floated the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act if locals continue protesting and ‘impeding’ law enforcement operations.
What is the Insurrection Act and how many times has it been invoked?
The ongoing unrest in Minnesota has prompted Donald Trump to threaten the invocation of the Insurrection Act.
The Insurrection Act, introduced in 1807, gives a President the authority to deploy the military to suppress civil unrest or enforce the law.
The act was last invoked in 1992 during the Los Angeles riots, which broke out when four LAPD officers were acquitted after beating Black man Rodney King.
Previously, Trump has admitted that he would invoke the controversial act if needed.
‘We have an Insurrection Act for a reason,’ he told reporters in October.
‘If people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure, I’d do that.’
Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem labelled Pretti a ‘domestic terrorist’, while Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino suggested he was plotting to ‘massacre law enforcement’.
However, the New York Times and Guardian have said videos from the scene back up eyewitness accounts who say Mr Pretti never drew his gun, which he was legally permitted to carry.
Michael Pretti, Alex’s father, told AP his son got involved in protests because he ‘cared’ about people.
‘He thought it was terrible, you know, kidnapping children, just grabbing people off the street. He cared about those people, and he knew it was wrong, so he did participate in protests,’ Michael said.
Pretti’s parents said the ‘sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting’.
They said: ‘Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs.
‘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. Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.