An ICU Nurse, a Protest, and a Federal Shooting: What We Know About Alex Pretti’s Death in Minneapolis

On a winter Saturday morning in Minneapolis, federal officers shot and killed Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse who worked at the Minneapolis VA Health Care System, according to a statement from Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.

The shooting happened shortly before 9 a.m., after what Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara described as a “heated confrontation” between federal agents and protesters angry about the government’s immigration enforcement tactics. What exactly occurred in the moments before shots were fired is still disputed, and the gap between official accounts and emerging bystander video has become the central fact of the story.

Conflicting accounts, limited public evidence

The Department of Homeland Security said agents were conducting an operation when they were approached by an armed resident. DHS claimed Pretti was shot after “violently resisting” efforts to disarm him, but offered no supporting evidence in that public statement. Local officials, meanwhile, indicated they believed Pretti was a lawful gun owner with a permit to carry. His family told reporters he owned a handgun and had a concealed carry permit in Minnesota.

But in bystander videos that surfaced soon after the shooting, Pretti appears with a phone in his hand, and none of the circulating footage cited in reporting clearly shows a weapon. That visual contradiction—an official claim of an armed approach versus video frames that appear to show only a phone—has intensified calls for a transparent accounting.

O’Hara also said he believes more than one federal agent fired shots, a detail that may become important as investigators reconstruct the scene and determine whose weapon discharged when.

A death set against a city on edge

Pretti’s killing arrives amid heightened tension in Minneapolis over immigration enforcement. The shooting came less than three weeks after Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, according to local officials and reporting. Pretti’s family said he participated in protests following Good’s death.

His father, Michael Pretti, described his son as someone who believed protesting was a way to express care for people swept up in enforcement actions. In a separate account, his father said Pretti was deeply disturbed by what he viewed as people being grabbed off the street, and that he felt a moral obligation to show up.

That civic impulse, his parents said, was also the source of a worry they voiced directly to him. Two weeks before he died, they urged him to protest but not to engage or escalate.

Who Alex Pretti was

In public records and family recollections, Pretti is described as an ICU nurse and a federal employee who served veterans. State records show he was registered as a nurse in Minnesota as of 2021, with a license set to expire in March 2026.

Before nursing, his family said, he studied at the University of Minnesota and graduated in 2011 with a degree focused on biology, society and the environment. He worked as a research scientist before returning to school to become a registered nurse.

Family and neighbors also described a life with routines that don’t typically map onto an encounter that ends in fatal gunfire: long shifts, a quiet condominium life, and an outdoorsman’s love of time outside. Neighbors said he lived alone in a small condo building about two miles from where he was shot. One neighbor called him warmhearted and helpful—someone who stepped in when the building feared a gas leak or something seemed off in the neighborhood.

Several neighbors acknowledged Pretti owned guns—at least enough that they’d seen him take a rifle to a range—but said they didn’t think of him as someone who carried a pistol day to day. His family similarly said they knew he owned a handgun and had a permit, but they hadn’t known him to carry it.

A neighbor who had known him for years described him as “gentle,” and said she would not expect him to attack an officer.

The family’s search for basic answers

In the hours after the shooting, Pretti’s family said they struggled to get information from authorities. They said they first learned of the death after being contacted by a reporter, then tried calling officials—only to be bounced between agencies and told that Border Patrol was closed and hospitals couldn’t answer questions. The family said the Hennepin County Medical Examiner ultimately confirmed there was a body matching their son’s name and description. By Saturday evening, they said they still had not heard from any federal law enforcement agency about what happened.

That detail—parents learning of a fatal shooting from a journalist, then struggling to get official confirmation and explanation—has become its own indictment in the public conversation, separate from the unresolved facts of the shooting itself.

Calls for an investigation

Pretti was a member of a union representing federal employees affiliated with the Minneapolis VA, which described his death as “devastating,” according to reporting. The American Nurses Association said it was “deeply disturbed” and called for a “full, unencumbered investigation.”

Those calls reflect a broader question hanging over Minneapolis: What safeguards exist when federal operations unfold in public spaces amid community protest—and how quickly will the government produce evidence when lethal force is used?

What’s still unanswered

Based on what has been publicly reported so far, several key points remain unclear:

1)Whether Pretti ever displayed or reached for a weapon before shots were fired. DHS alleges an armed approach; bystander video described in reporting shows a phone in his hand.

2)Who fired, and how many shots were fired. Local leadership has said more than one agent likely shot.

3)Why federal agents were in that specific location at that time, and what operational plan governed their interaction with protesters.

4)When body-camera footage, operational reports, or investigative findings will be released, if they exist and are releasable.

For now, the public record contains two things at once: the portrait of a nurse described as civically engaged and personally gentle, and a fatal encounter with federal officers whose key moments have not been clearly documented for the public.

What happens next—whether investigators quickly publish a credible, evidence-backed timeline, or whether the story hardens into competing narratives—will shape not just the aftermath of one death, but the terms of trust between Minneapolis and the federal presence operating inside it.