Donald Trump has claimed his administration is 'reviewing everything' about the killing of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old American nurse who was shot dead on the streets of Minneapolis by US Border Patrol officers.
Pretti had been attending a protest against the US Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE), whose agents had killed Renee Good earlier this month, when he was pinned to the ground before being shot 10 times in five seconds.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has claimed that Pretti was carrying a semi-automatic handgun and two magazines of ammunition, claiming the man 'wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement'.
Footage of his killing shows that the object the man had been holding in his hands was a phone, and he did have a gun on him which Minnesota officials said he had a permit to have.
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Videos from witnesses also appear to show that Pretti was disarmed before he was shot, with officers pulling a gun from his waistband.
Trump told the Wall Street Journal his administration was 'reviewing everything and will come out with a determination', but also said Pretti having a gun on his person 'doesn’t play good either' and suggested that the weapon was 'a dangerous and unpredictable gun' which 'goes off when people don’t know it'.
One of the major questions around the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti is where that first shot came from, with claims that the first shot came from Pretti's confiscated gun that accidentally went off in the hands of an ICE agent after being taken from the man.
However, Bellingcat reports that after extensive study of footage of the killing of Alex Pretti, the first shot appears to come from a Border Patrol agent and Pretti's gun never went off.
Witnesses to the shooting described Pretti getting between Border Patrol agents and a woman they were pepper spraying before he was wrestled to the ground.
They say an agent in a grey jacket appears to take a gun from Pretti's person, saying that at no point in the footage did Pretti wield the weapon as he was instead holding a camera.
They say that instead as the ICE agent in the grey jacket appears to take a gun away someone shouts 'gun' and one shot can be heard, followed by nine more in quick succession.
From their analysis of the video footage, an ICE agent in a black beanie had stepped to where the man in the grey jacket had been standing and fired that first shot.
After that two other Border Patrol agents, one in a black beanie and another in a brown beanie, open fire on Pretti, while Bellingcat notes that at the time when the first shot is fired the man in grey can be seen leaving with a gun taken from the 37-year-old.
They note that in the footage, the weapon's slide does not move back, indicating it was not fired and therefore there was likely no accidental shot which scared ICE agents into repeatedly shooting Pretti.
If that is the case, then Pretti's gun was not wielded, it had been removed from his person and no shots were fired to prompt the Border Patrol agents to open fire themselves.
In a statement to Kare 11, Pretti's parents accused the Trump administration of 'sickening lies' over the killing of their son.
They said: "The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs.
“He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper-sprayed.
“Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.”
LADbible Group has contacted the Department of Homeland Security for comment.
Topics: US News, Crime, Donald Trump
Joe Harker