An ICE agent allegedly shouted “several times”: “He has a gun!”
Two officers fired their weapons during the fatal confrontation with Alex Pretti in Minneapolis over the weekend, according to an initial Department of Homeland Security report to Congress reviewed by CNN.
The report — from the initial Customs and Border Protection (CBP) investigation into the Pretti shooting — says an agent shouted several times, “He has a gun.” This was before a member of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and another of the Border Patrol fired shots as the agents wrestled Alex Pretti to the ground.
“CBP personnel attempted to arrest Pretti. Pretti resisted CBP’s efforts and a struggle ensued,” the report says. “During the fight, one [agente da Patrulha de Fronteira] he shouted several times: ‘He has a gun!’”.
The report continues: “Approximately five seconds later, a [agente da Patrulha de Fronteira] fired his CBP-supplied Glock 19 and a [agente da Alfândega e Proteção de Fronteiras] also fired his CBP-issued Glock 47 at Pretti.”
The document does not detail whether the bullets fired by both law enforcement officers hit the victim. Nor does he claim, as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem did after the shooting, that Pretti was “brandishing” a gun.
Questions have been mounting about whether officers fired Pretti’s gun during the fight that turned into a deadly shootout, filmed by bystanders from multiple angles as the melee and subsequent homicide unfolded.
According to the report, the agents fired their own firearms, provided by the agency. A CNN analysis of available footage of the confrontation revealed that an officer appeared to remove Pretti’s firearm from his waistband moments before the shooting.
The report, coming from CBP’s internal investigation conducted by the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which investigates possible criminal conduct by CBP officers, is the first to be released of several ongoing investigations into the shooting, including by the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations Service (DHS) and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Detention.
A screenshot of a video obtained by Reuters shows an officer spraying pepper spray on Alex Pretti before Pretti was fatally shot in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 24. (Video obtained by Reuters)
Also according to the most recent report, “after the shooting, a Border Patrol agent reported that he was in possession of Pretti’s gun. The patrol member later seized and stored Pretti’s gun in his vehicle.”
CBP agents “cut off Pretti’s clothes and provided him with medical assistance, placing chest seals on his wounds,” the document reads.
Before the shooting, according to the report, a Border Patrol agent “was confronted by two civilians who were blowing whistles.”
The officer “ordered both women to get out of the road, but they did not move. [agente] he pushed both of them and one of the women ran towards a man, later identified as Alex Jeffrey Pretti, 37, a US citizen.”
The agents tried to arrest Pretti. Having “resisted the efforts of CBP personnel, a struggle ensued,” the initial findings report states.
More than ten minutes after the victim was shot and killed, Minneapolis Fire Department Emergency Medical Services transported him to Hennepin County Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at approximately 9:32 am.
CBP investigators were “informed that an autopsy would be performed by medical personnel from the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office” and will request official findings when the autopsy is complete, the document concludes.
