Two witnesses to the murder of Alex Pretty have sworn in their testimonies that the 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse did not brandish a weapon when he approached federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday, contradicting the claim of officials from the administration of United States President Donald Trump, who sought to portray the shooting of a man lying on the ground as an act of self-defense, the British newspaper The Guardian reports today.
Their allegations were made in sworn statements filed late Saturday in federal court in the US state of Minnesota, just hours after Pretti's killing, as part of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of Minneapolis protesters against US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials who are leading the city's intensified immigration crackdown.
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One witness is a woman who recorded the clearest video of the deadly shooting, and the other is a doctor who lives nearby and who said federal officials initially prevented him from providing medical assistance to the victim of the shooting, the Guardian reports.
The names of both witnesses were blacked out (redacted) in publicly available court filings.
In her testimony, the woman who filmed the shooting, standing directly behind Pretti and wearing a pink coat, identified herself as a "children's entertainer who specializes in face painting." She said she had come to the scene on her way to work because she was "involved in community surveillance, because it's extremely important to document what ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is doing to my neighbors."
She described a harrowing scene in which federal officers tackled Preti after he rushed to the aid of another bystander who had been pushed to the ground by the agents. A federal agent then sprayed a chemical agent in the faces of Preti and the woman he was trying to help.
The witness stated that at no point did she see Preti holding a gun.
She said: "The agents threw the man to the ground. I didn't see him touch any of them – he wasn't even facing them. It didn't look like he was trying to resist, he was just helping the woman up. I didn't see him with a gun. They threw him to the ground. Four or five agents were on top of him on the ground and then they just started shooting at him. They shot him so many times… I don't know why they were shooting. He was just helping. I was five feet away from him and they just shot him…"
She continued: "I read the DHS statement about what happened and it's wrong. The man didn't approach the agents with a gun. He approached them with a camera. He was just trying to help the woman get up, and they tackled him to the ground. I feel scared. It's only been a few hours since a man was shot in front of me, and I don't feel like I can go home because I heard the agents are looking for me. I don't know what the agents will do when they find me. I just know they're not telling the truth about what happened."
Another witness, a 29-year-old doctor, testified that he saw the shooting from the window of his apartment, near the scene. Before the shooting, he said, he saw Preti yelling at the agents, but "didn't see him attack them or brandish any weapons."
After the shooting, when he tried to provide medical assistance, he was initially not allowed to do so.
"Initially, the ICE agents wouldn't let me through. But none of the ICE agents who were near the victim were performing CPR, and I could see that the victim was in critical condition. I insisted that they let me examine him," the witness said.
When he finally convinced the agents to let him through, he said he was unclear why the victim was lying on his side, but that instead of checking for a pulse or starting CPR, the agents appeared to be counting his bullet wounds.
The victim had "at least three gunshot wounds to his back," the doctor said, as well as one to the upper left chest and another possible gunshot wound to his neck.
"I checked for a pulse, but I didn't feel one," he said.
The witness accounts, combined with video evidence reviewed by the Guardian, directly contradict claims by senior Trump administration officials, including President Trump himself, the Homeland Security secretary and Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol commander, who have called Pretti an “armed assailant” who approached federal officers “brandishing” a gun and threatening to “massacre” them.
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