He was then tackled to the ground by multiple agents, and a few moments later, several shots rang out, killing him. Pretti’s death comes after the shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent on January 7.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has since alleged that the officers fired in defense as Pretti had a gun.The 37-year-old was ‘a lawful gun owner with a permit to carry’, said Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara.
It’s thought that Pretti may have had his gun on him at the time of the ordeal, but he was not pointing it at law enforcement – something which witnesses have now backed up.
Two witnesses said they did not see Pretti brandish a weapon in a sworn testimony, The Guardian reports. Their names were redacted in the publicly available filings.
One of the witnesses’ harrowing statements read: “The agents pulled the man on the ground. I didn’t see him touch any of them – he wasn’t even turned toward them. It didn’t look like he was trying to resist, just trying to help the woman up.
“I didn’t see him with a gun. They threw him to the ground. Four or five agents had him on the ground and they just started shooting him. They shot him so many times… I don’t know why they shot him. He was only helping. I was five feet from him and they just shot him.””The man did not approach the agents with a gun,” she went on to say.
