The man fatally shot by at least one Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis on Saturday has been identified.
VA nurse and U.S. citizen Alex Jeffrey Pretti, 37, was the man shot to death on January 24 by federal agents, according to the Star Tribune.
Records show he had an address listed in South Minneapolis.
He attended the University of Minnesota.
He was also issued a nursing license in 2021, which remains active through March 2026. His family confirmed to the Associated Press that Pretti worked as an ICU nurse.
In a statement to the Daily Mail, a Minneapolis-based nurse named Ruth Anway said that Pretti was a colleague. “I worked with him daily for years at the VA hospital,” Anway said. ‘He was an ICU nurse. He worked with veterans. He was a really good guy. He definitely did not deserve to get killed.’
The Minnesota Democratic Farm-Labor Party, the state’s Democratic Party, posted another confirmation from a colleague of Pretti.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara confirmed that Pretti had no serious criminal history before his killing, save for some parking tickets.
The Daily Beast attempted to contact Pretti’s family.
Video footage shared with The Daily Beast in the lead-up to the shooting shows Pretti on his phone, directing traffic in the street. A nearby woman is then pinned down by federal agents, as Pretti comes to the woman’s side.
Federal agents then wrestle Pretti to the ground in a chaotic scene.
A border patrol agent then shoots Pretti. As some federal agents walk away from the scene, several additional gunshots are heard.
Federal officials said the officer who shot and killed Pretti has been with Customs and Border Protection for 8 years.
DHS has claimed that Pretti ambushed federal agents with his gun and “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”
O’Hara said that he was a “lawful gun owner with a permit to carry.”
Pretti’s killing marks the second U.S. citizen to be killed at the hands of DHS in Minneapolis this month. Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old Minnesota mother, was shot and killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in her car on Jan. 7.
Good’s killing sparked daily protests in the Twin Cities region, and the demonstrations have only increased in the hours since Pretti was killed.
