Transcript of 10 Shots: Federal Agents Kill Another Person in Minnesota

A warning that this episode contains descriptions of violence and graphic language. From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily. The fuck did you just do?

What the fuck did you just do?

Outrage and protests in Minneapolis after federal agents shoot and kill a man today. Border Patrol agents shot and killed a man in Minneapolis on Saturday. The second fatal clash between federal authorities and protesters in less than a month. You murder How dare you? I witnessed video shows once again, reckless, violent, and dangerous federal agents taking the life of a Minnesotan. If it can happen here, it can happen in your community, too. The shooting prompted a fresh wave of fury and condemnation across the country.

How many more Americans need to die or get badly hurt for this operation to end?

It horrified residents in the city that has been revolting against a federal government crackdown on immigration. This individual who came with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation of federal law enforcement officers committed an act of domestic terrorism. That's the facts.

No one who wants to be peaceful shows up at a protest with a firearms that is loaded with two full magazines. That is not a peaceful protest, and you do not get to touch law enforcement.

Federal officials alleged that the protester was the aggressor and that the agents acted in self-defense. Oh, my God.

Oh, they just saw somebody. They don't know.

But videos of the shooting directly contradict that claim. Today, we talk to our colleagues, Devon Lum and Ernesto Londonio, about how the shooting unfolded and what may come next? It's Monday, January 26th. Devon, welcome to The Daily.

Thanks for having me.

Devon, by now, I think a lot of people have seen this really graphic footage of a man named Alex Preddy getting shot by federal agents in Minnesota. The Department of Homeland Security CREDI claims that Preddy was approaching these agents with a handgun, that he was intent on committing what they called, quote, a massacre. You are a member of our Visual Investigations team, which means that you have been spending a lot of time analyzing footage from this shooting shooting from the scene. So what do you make of the government's claims?

We've been analyzing footage from various different angles over the past day and a half, trying to better understand what took place before, during, and after the shooting. There's contention over what happened between the federal government and the state government, and we're doing our best to resolve that contention by walking through the visual evidence as clearly and as in as we possibly can. The one thing that's blatantly clear in our analysis that contrasts with the narrative that the administration put out there in the immediate aftermath of the shooting is that Pradee was not holding a gun when he began interacting with the federal agents or throughout the entirety of their interaction. Instead, he's holding a cell phone.

Can you just set the scene, Devon, at the beginning of the footage that you've been analyzing, what do we see? What's going on?

The footage begins with two protesters interacting with the federal agent on a street in Minneapolis in front of a donut shop. We can see that Pretty is walking into the street with his outstretched arm, holding his cell phone, recording the interaction. He appears to be an observer in this moment. He's standing further away from where that interaction is taking place and appears to be directing traffic with his free hand.

How did things escalate from there?

The agent who is interacting with the two protesters standing in the street begins to push the protesters in the direction of Mr. Pretty, and eventually, they make their way towards where he's standing. Before I get into the details, I just want to say that these next moments happen very quickly. From the time that things started to escalate until the final shot is fired, just over 40 seconds elapsed. Wow. Once they get there, the agent pushes one of the protesters to the ground, and Alex Prady steps in between the agent and the woman who has just been pushed to the ground. The agent begins firing pepper spray at him. In that moment, we can see that he's still holding his his cell phone, and his other hand is still free. Then Alex Prady turns around to, apparently, try to help the woman who's been pushed to the ground up to her feet, and the agent continues firing pepper spray at both of them. Several agents appear behind Mr. Pretty and begin pulling him in order to get him down to the ground. Once he's down on the ground, several other agents are holding him down. They're grabbing at his legs, they're pushing him in his back, and they appear to be striking him repetitively.

Another agent walks towards the Scrum and reaches toward Alex Pretty with open hands. It's unclear at that moment why he's grabbing at him, but a few seconds later, we hear someone saying he's got a gun over and over again. They say it repetitively.

Meaning that they might not have realized that he had a gun until that moment when he's on the ground.

Exactly. Again, looking back at the footage, from any point of the interaction up until now, there is no visual giveaway that would indicate that agents knew that he was armed.

What happens next? How does the scene unfold from there once he's restrained and on the ground?

The agent who reached into the Scrum with open hands, grabs a firearms from Alex Pretty's waist. Then, about one second after Pretty's gun has been removed, another agent fires the first shot.

So he can see the other agent taking the gun out of the holster.

We're not exactly sure what he's seeing at this point because it's a very split second. But in the video, it appears he has a clear vantage point of the disarming as it's happening.

So at this point, just to be clear, one agent has removed the gun, has backed away from Alex Pretty, and that's when we hear the first shot that was fired?

Yes. The gun that was apparently removed from Alex Pretty's hip is away from the pile before the first shot is fired. And after that first shot is fired, Preti appears to get up onto his knees, and his hands, which were bunched up near his head, move down towards his sides. The agent fires three more times, and Preti begins to to the ground. He reaches down with his left hand while falling, apparently to brace himself, and there does not appear to be weapons in either of his hands. Then, the agent who initially pepper-sprayed Pradee joins in, and the two of them fire six more shots at Pradee's disarmed body, which is, at this point, laying motionless on the ground. In total, they appear to fire 10 shots in five seconds. We can hear in later footage that as agents are searching Alex Pretty's body after he's already been shot, one agent yells, Where's the gun? Where's the gun? So clearly not all of the agents know that Alex Pretty had already been disarmed.

Given the fact that the first shot was fired only about a second after Pretty's gun was removed, even though the agent who shot Alex Pretty might have been able to see that the gun had been unholstered. It all is happening so fast that you can't know for sure whether he definitely knew that when he was firing.

Well, sure. It's difficult to know what the agent who fired saw or knew when he fired, other than that there was a gun present. But what we do know is that Alex Prady was very clearly subdued on the ground. He was being held down and his arms were by his head. Again, the agent was standing behind Pradee. He was aiming at his back. So he presented no clear threat to the agents at that point. But I want to stress that the statement that is being made by the Department of Homeland Security is that Freddie approached an agent with a gun. It's true, he was armed with a gun, but the videos show he was not holding it in his hand throughout the entire interaction with the agents. The Department of Homeland Security also said the agent fired out of concern for the agent's safety. If we're looking at the footage and we're assessing whether or not there's a concern for safety, we can see that Freddie is on the ground. He's being subdued. Even if there's a gun on his at one point, he can't reach it. Said the response to shoot him, to pull out a firearms and shoot him rather than taking a beat to understand whether another agent, one of your colleagues, has disarmed the person you're about to shoot.

It just doesn't comport with what the Department of Homeland Security is saying.

We talked to our colleague, Charles Holmes, on the show about a week ago. He described at that point what felt almost like a lull in the sense that it had been a few days since a federal agent had shot Renee Good. Obviously, people had taken to the streets, were outraged. But it felt also like ICE was operating a little bit less visibly. I think it was an open question at that time, whether things would escalate or would de-escalate. It feels really notable that here we are, just a few days later, reacting to another fatal shooting.

Yes. This is the second shooting in less than a month that's been carried out by federal agents in Minneapolis, where the footage that we've analyzed has conflicted with statements that have been made by the Department of Homeland Security about what took place. Tensions are already high online, around the country, and on the ground in Minneapolis, and this is sure to inflame them further.

Devon Lump, thank so much. Thanks for having me. We'll be right back. Ernesto, hi.

Hi, Rachel.

I wonder, Ernesto, could you just tell us what it's been like on the ground in the hours since Alex Pretty was shot?

I think this is a city where people are shell-shocked. Ever since this immigration crackdown began late last month, there's been a sense that things are escalating in a way that feels unsustainable. And Saturday morning, a second individual was killed by federal agents. In both cases, these were American citizens who had decided to take to the streets to monitor and to challenge the work of immigration agents. And in both cases, they were gone down. I think people, both in local government, but just residents, have been trying desperately to find an off-ramp from a situation they think is really dangerous.

Can you talk about what we know about Alex Peretti as of now?

Yes, we know that he was a nurse at the VA VA, locally. We are told that he cared deeply for his patients and that he was a beloved member of his community. We know that he carried a weapon and that he was allowed to be a gun owner and that he was armed when this occurred. We know he had no criminal record, and he was a federal employee. I don't think we've seen any evidence to suggest that he was a violent person, but we're only about 24 hours into this, so I think there's a lot we will learn in the hours and days ahead.

What do we know about what Border Patrol was doing at the scene at that moment? Do we know anything about who they were trying to apprehend, for instance?

What we heard is that the Border Patrol agents were trying to find a specific guy, an immigrant from Ecuador, that they portrayed as somebody with a very significant criminal history, somebody who was violent. What the Trump administration is saying is any effort of people impeding the work of these agents is unconscionable because they're just here to impose order and to keep people and neighborhoods safe. However, just hours after the shooting, you had the Minnesota Department of Corrections, which runs the prison system, come out and say, Hey, we looked into this matter. We looked into court records. We can't find evidence that this individual has anything beyond some misdemeanor traffic citations. Essentially, the state is pouring cold water on the genesis of the operation that led to this killing.

If the shooting had been done by local authorities, you could imagine and predict what would happen next just in terms of an investigation into the use of force. The shooting obviously happened by a border patrol agent. I wonder, how would it normally work in the aftermath of this a thing? What would you normally expect, and what do we know about what is happening now?

So the way this has been handled in the past, for instance, when there was a US Marshal who used deadly force here a few years ago, is the federal government, the Department of Justice, and its Office of Civil Rights partners quickly with the state agency that has the most expertise in use of force cases, and they collect and review evidence jointly, trying to make sense of whether the officer, when he or she used deadly force, had a credible fear that that was the only means to remain safe in the face of a dire threat to the agent or to others around them. These videos that have emerged to date, while really providing us considerable amount of insight into what happened in that moment, are only part of the story. Usually, when this investigation investigation is conducted, you try to get more video of what was happening minutes before this. You try to get witness accounts of what was being said as part of this exchange. So typically, it takes weeks, if not months, for investigators to assemble a complete and conclusive picture that allows them to decide whether or not a prosecution is warranted. What you saw in the immediate aftermath of the initial shooting early this month, the shooting of Renee Good, is that top officials in the Trump administration said that the state agency was being cut off of the investigation.

This was highly anomalous for these shootings, and it immediately created a concern among local officials that there was going to be a cover up, that we weren't going to get a proper and thorough investigation. What the local prosecutor in Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, did was in the absence of the ability of gathering firsthand evidence, forensic evidence and witness testimony from the people that would normally be involved in this an investigation, She created an online portal and asked people out in the community to submit videos and any other evidence that might help her office establish whether or not a crime occurred and whether or not there's enough evidence to bring charges against against the agents.

That sounds extremely unusual.

To call this unusual would be the understatement of the decade. And fast forward a couple of weeks when we have this second fatal shooting on Saturday. At the outset, local and state officials who ran to the scene to try to preserve and examine evidence were physically blocked from getting there. And as of this moment, they don't even know the identity of the federal agents who opened fire. So something as basic as knowing who it is you're investigating is going to make any prosecution or any investigation that people regard as credible and satisfying really, really hard.

And in the meantime, of course, you already have federal officials coming out and making conclusions as though an investigation has already been conducted. You have Cash Patel and you have Christie Noem saying this guy was a menace. He had a gun. He was threatening agents. While an investigation is still pending, you already have federal officials, much like in the aftermath of Renee Good, coming out and basically stating what happened as if we know for certain.

Absolutely. Usually, there's an appeal for calm and patience in the wake of these incidents, which are so traumatic for communities. What we've seen in the case is the opposite. We've seen federal officials use really incendiary and jarring language to describe the conduct of people who have been observing, documenting, and challenging the work of immigration agents. They've characterized some of these people as domestic terrorists. The Department of Justice has launched an investigation into the governor, Tim Walls, the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Fry, the mayor of Saint Paul, who just got inaugurated a few days ago, the attorney general, and the top prosecutor in Minneapolis. The contention is that all these Democratic elected officials have been speaking in ways that the federal government deems dangerous for their immigration enforcement operation because they've been resisting it and criticizing it and challenging it.

Is there any evidence that local law enforcement is, in fact, obstructing or interfering with federal officials in their deportation efforts?

No. It's important to point out that the city of Minneapolis and the city of Saint Paul, they have chosen not to cooperate with civil immigration enforcement, meaning police officers in these cities do not ask residents about their immigration status. However, when it comes to people who are in jails and prisons, the state says that they cooperate routinely in facilitating a seamless and practical handover of individuals who are subject to deportation, who are about to be released either from state prisons because they've completed their sentence or from jails. So local officials say the sense that Minnesota is this radical sanctuary state where people who are here legally are essentially shielded by the local government, is blatantly false.

Can you walk us through how state officials are responding? People like Tim Walsh, Mayor Jacob Fry, Senator Amy Klobechar. What are they saying, and how has any of that rhetoric shifted since the first shooting?

They are suing the administration, trying to see if a judge orders the administration to put an end to the immigration crackdown. And Saturday's shooting led Governor Walsh to deploy the National Guard because I think he and people in his administration feel that this city could once again blow up the way we saw in in the wake of George Floyd's killing in 2020.

I want to talk about the broader political response for a moment. Are there other options that elected officials, both in Minnesota and beyond, are considering right now?

The federal lawmakers from Minnesota appear to be in lockstep, thinking that maybe the only way to shut this down or to use one of the few leverage of power they have over the Trump administration is the threat of withholding funding for the Department of Homeland Security. The question, though, considering the fact that Republicans are in control of both chambers in Capitol Hill, is whether you could have enough Republicans peel off and agree with Democrats. While I think we're starting to see glimmers of Republicans signaling discomfort, it's far from clear whether you'd have enough votes and enough opposition to really make a difference.

Polls in this country show that most people are supportive of the Trump administration's stated goals of dealing with immigration by closing the border, enforcing deportations of people who are here illegally. But a majority of Americans think that ICE has gone too far in its tactics. In recent weeks, since the killing of Renee Good, you have started to see and hear people who have traditionally been supportive of the administration really question these policies. You had Joe Rogan basically compare ICE to the Gestapo. You had Maria Berta Romo pushing Cash Patel on television about what threat Alex Pretty could have possibly posed, given the fact that he was holding a camera and not a gun. And so, while it's incredibly hard to speculate, of course, about what comes next, I do wonder if the second killing feels like in any way a tipping point to you right now.

I think the videos in this case are singularly horrifying. I also think, just based on the emails that have been streaming into my inbox over the past 24 hours, that we remain a deeply divided country on the question of immigration and on the merits of a really draconian response to the problem of illegal immigration. There are people for whom these actions are not justified but welcome. There are many people who have written to me to say these people in Minneapolis who got gunned down had it coming. They shouldn't have been interfering the work of immigration agents and let this be a lesson to other people who would want to challenge what they're doing. I think one of the things that is really interesting about the two individuals whose lives were lost is on some level, they're deeply sympathetic figures. This woman was a mother of three and a poet. The second victim was a nurse who worked and took care of veterans. It feels hard, I think, for the average American to take this assertion that these two people who were gunned down in broad daylight fit the description of a domestic terrorist. I think the key question is what happens to the segment of the electorate that is more moderate on these issues, that is more persuadable, and for whom these really searing images and videos are going to push them into the camp of thinking this has gone too far and that on some level, the administration needs to be reined in.

Ernesto, thank you so much.

Thank you.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. A dangerous winter storm pummled much of the Eastern United States on Sunday, shattering temperature records, knocking out power to more than a million homes and businesses, and wreaking havoc on daily life from Mississippi to Massachusetts. Five people were found dead in New York City over the weekend, and officials were investigating whether they died because of the cold. One person died of exposure in Austin, Texas, while the Louisiana Department of Health said two men had died of hypothermia. And Representative Maxwell Alejandro Frost, Democrat of Florida, was hit in the face by a man who told the lawmaker that he would be deported at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, over the weekend. The police said they responded to reports of an assault at the High West Saloon, a whiskey distillery and bar where a private party was being held. The attacker, quote, told me that Trump was going to deport me before he punched me in the face, said Mr. Frost. Post, whose family moved from Cuba to Florida in the early 1960s, in a social media post. Today's episode was produced by Diana Wyn and Nina Feldman.

It was edited by Lizzo Baylen and Lisa Chou. Contains music by Pat McCusker, Ron DeMistoe, Dan Powell, and Diane Wong, and was engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for The Daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow.