On a Saturday morning in late January, Alex Pretti walked into a crowded stretch of south Minneapolis and never came home. Seven months later, his parents and sister sat down for their first television interview and said what they have believed since the videos spread: that their son was killed in public, then smeared in public, while the people who fired the sH๏τs have still not been officially identified to the family.

Pretti was 37, a U.S. citizen, and an intensive-care nurse for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Friends and relatives have described him as someone who cared about his neighborhood and was alarmed by the federal immigration surge then unfolding in Minneapolis. On Jan. 24, 2026, during the Trump administration’s “Operation Metro Surge,” he was sH๏τ and killed by two federal immigration officers near Nicollet Avenue in the Whittier area—about two weeks after another U.S. citizen, Renee Nicole Good, was fatally sH๏τ by an ICE agent in the same city.

Federal officials moved quickly to frame the encounter. The Department of Homeland Security said a man approached Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm handgun and that an agent fired “defensive sH๏τs.” Senior figures in the administration went further. Pretti was called an agitator, an “ᴀssᴀssin,” a “domestic terrorist,” and someone who looked as if he wanted to “mᴀssacre” law enforcement. President Trump later referred to him as an agitator and “perhaps” an insurrectionist after earlier video of a confrontation circulated.

Bystander footage told a different sequence, according to multiple news organizations that reviewed the videos. Pretti appears to be recording with a phone. An officer shoves a woman into him. He seems to try to help her. Officers take him to the ground. His legally carried handgun is pulled from him while he is down. Then a burst of gunfire follows—about 10 sH๏τs in a few seconds, according to video analyses cited by ABC, AP, and others. Use-of-force experts quoted by the ᴀssociated Press said the videos undercut the initial claim that he walked up brandishing a weapon and forced officers to fire in self-defense. Minnesota officials also said agents likely mishandled evidence by removing the gun from the scene.

The Hennepin County Medical Examiner later listed the cause of death as multiple gunsH๏τ wounds and classified the manner of death as homicide. That ruling is a medical finding, not a criminal verdict. An internal CBP ᴀssessment reported by NPR described resistance during an attempted arrest and officers yelling that he had a gun, but did not repeat the administration’s first public story that he charged officers intending a mᴀssacre. Minnesota Public Radio has identified the two officers as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and CBP officer Raymundo Gutierrez; the family said in August they still wanted those names released through an official process.

The cruelty of how the family learned is what they keep returning to. Michael and Susan Pretti say no agency called them. They recognized their son on television—his jacket, his sunglᴀsses—and watched the shooting play out on the news. “That’s how we found out,” Michael said on Good Morning America. Susan said she was not surprised that Alex tried to help someone. What shocked her, she said, was that he was killed and that seven months later no one had given them a complete account or been held accountable. “What did he do to deserve to be murdered?” she asked. “They murdered our child.”

The Justice Department opened a federal civil rights investigation days after the shooting. DHS and the FBI are also involved. In August, DHS said the inquiry remained active. The FBI declined to comment. A DOJ spokesperson told ABC that families are usually not briefed during an investigation and that contact, if any, comes later—at indictment, plea, trial, or sentencing. Family attorney Steve Schleicher said that is not good enough: the Prettis, he argued, have a right to know who sH๏τ their son, to be consulted in a meaningful way, and not to watch the process drag on. A July meeting with the U.S. attorney in Minnesota, he said, “raised more questions than answers.” Local prosecutors have separately pressed for evidence sharing across the Metro Surge shootings; by mid-July, Minnesota officials said federal partners had begun turning over materials, including body-worn camera files.

That is where the case stood when the family went on national television: videos widely available, competing official narratives, a homicide ruling, an open federal probe, and parents who still cannot get a straight line from the government that employed the officers. Michael Pretti said the videos are clear enough. What they want now is not another statement. They want accountability.