Alex Pretti identified as man fatally shot by federal officers in Minneapolis

Jeff Day and Paul Walsh, The Minnesota Star Tribune on Jan 24, 2026

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MINNEAPOLIS — The man fatally shot by federal officers during an immigration enforcement action in Minneapolis on Saturday, Jan. 24, was Alex Jeffrey Pretti, according to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.

The killing of Pretti, 37, of south Minneapolis, follows the shooting death of Renee Good by an agent on Jan. 7 on Portland Avenue, also on the city’s South Side.

“I share the intense grief and anger of so many that another Minnesotan — Alex Pretti, 37 years old, an ICU nurse who served veterans — was fatally shot during the Trump administration’s Operation Metro Surge,“ Ellison said in a statement.

“On Monday, my office and I will be in court arguing to end this illegal and unconstitutional occupation of our cities and the terror and violence it’s inflicting. This must stop. Now.”

Reporters with the Minnesota Star Tribune reached two members of Pretti’s immediate family as the news was still spreading. His sister fought back sobs on the phone before hanging up.

At a news conference, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said Pretti, whose name at that point had not been released, had only some parking tickets on his record. Law enforcement sources said Saturday their records show Pretti had no serious criminal history.

O’Hara said the man killed was a “lawful gun owner” with a permit to carry a firearm in public, a fact that was later repeated by Gov. Tim Walz.

Pretti lived in a four-plex on Garfield Avenue in a quiet south Minneapolis neighborhood about a mile and a half southwest of where he was killed.

No one answered when his unit was rung, nor did his three neighbors. Someone in one upstairs unit waved reporters away before closing the blinds. An “Abolish Ice” sign hung in the window.

Records show that Pretti attended the University of Minnesota. His LinkedIn page notes that he was a “junior scientist” at the University of Minnesota Medical School starting in 2012. State records show Pretti was issued in 2021 a license to be a registered nurse, and it remains active through March 2026.

Dr. Dimitri Drekonja, a friend and colleague of Alex Pretti’s from the Minneapolis VA, described Pretti as a caring and funny ICU nurse who treated the hospital’s most critically ill veterans.

“He was a kind, friendly, jokey person,” Drekonja told the Minnesota Star Tribune. “Regardless of which hospital you’re in, taking a job in the ICU, it means that you’re up for a challenge, and it means you’re confident in your skills – because you’re going to see the sickest people in the hospital, and some of your patients are going to die. You’re going to have to have the personal skills with family, you’re going to have the technical skills to try to keep their loved one alive.

“He was great at it.”

Drekonja noted that the VA hired Pretti to help recruit for a research study prior to when he earned his nursing degree in 2021. Working together on that close-knit team jumpstarted a friendship that revealed a shared love of mountain biking, he said.

They never discussed Pretti’s political thoughts on immigration enforcement or gun ownership, but Drekonja said he was not surprised to learn that Pretti was out protesting ICE activity given that the city “is in a pretty dark place.”

The videos of his killing are difficult to stomach, Drekonja said,

“I see a guy trying to help. I see him underneath many, many bodies, and then I hear gun shots go off,” he added. “Others will pour over this far more, with better equipment than I have, but it’s really gutting.

“He was the type of person you really want to have as a friend or a neighbor.”

Pretti graduated in 2006 from Preble High School in Green Bay, Wisconsin, said district spokeswoman Lori Blakeslee.

“I’ve been chatting with the administrators, and we’re pretty devastated,” Blakeslee said.

While not identifying Pretti as the man who was killed, Walz said at a news conference Saturday that the man was a Minnesota resident and “all of us understand what happened this morning and the tragedy of it.”

Just moments earlier, Border Patrol Cmdr. Greg Bovino said at a news conference that the man who was killed “wanted to do maximum damage to agents.”

Walz rejected that as a false narrative.

“Thank God we have video,” Walz said. “It’s nonsense, people. It’s nonsense, and it’s lies.”

He rejected the rush to judgment by federal officials and said, just like the shooting of Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross on Jan. 7, that a full state investigation into the killing was needed and would be done.

“They already will slander this individual,” Walz said. “They already have made this the case. But you will all start to see it, some of you probably have, there are multiple angles [of this shooting]. And I’ll go back to what we talked about before. They’re telling you not to trust your eyes and ears. Not to trust the facts that you’re seeing.”

“There will be justice for Minnesotans,” Walz added.

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(Abby Simons, Deena Winter and Chloe Johnson of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this report.)

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