A week after 37-year old Renée Good was fatally shot by an ICE officer near her Minneapolis home, her partner, parents and four siblings have hired an attorney who represented the family of George Floyd to file a claim against federal officials.
“What happened to Renée is wrong, contrary to established policing practices and procedures, and should never happen in today’s America,” Chicago-based law firm Romanucci & Blandin said in a statement to The Washington Post. The statement said Good’s family wants “to honor her life with progress toward a kinder and more civil America. They do not want her used as a political pawn, but rather as an agent of peace for all.”
One of the firm’s founding partners, Antonio M. Romanucci, a civil rights lawyer, was among those who represented relatives of George Floyd after he was killed in 2020 by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. That legal team’s lawsuit against the city and the four officers involved resulted in a record $27 million settlement for Floyd’s family in 2021, the largest of its kind involving police misconduct.
The case involved Floyd’s relatives challenging law enforcement’s portrayal of him and even commissioning an independent autopsy. Chauvin was ultimately convicted of murdering Floyd the same year, sentenced to 22½ years in prison and later pleaded guilty to a separate federal charge that he violated Floyd’s federal civil rights.
Good’s shooting, on a residential street where neighbors were monitoring and protesting immigration enforcement activity, has similarly stirred national outrage on the left and the right. Since the fatal encounter on Wednesday, federal officials have sent additional ICE officers to the city, leading to a number of violent encounters publicized on social media and accusations that the operation to detain undocumented immigrants has become more of an armed occupation.
“It absolutely is escalating considerably over the last week here and it was already quite intense before that,” said State Rep. Mike Howard (D), who represents the suburb of Richfield. “We’ve seen many many examples of an escalating level of violence from federal immigrant officials, in particular targeting citizens, not just immigrants.”
“We’ve seen agents break windows of cars and pull observers out of vehicles, pepper spraying cars and individuals who are literally just exercising their constitutional rights to observe or protest. We had an incident outside of one of our high schools … where chemical irritants were utilized right as school was getting out,” Howard said. “It’s really honestly an hour-by-hour type of incursion, if you will, in a lot of our communities.”
On Monday, Minneapolis and Minnesota officials sued the federal government, claiming the Trump administration’s “unprecedented surge” of immigration agents is politically motivated and violates the U.S. Constitution. In their suit, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul are asking a federal court to issue a temporary restraining order to stop or limit the Department of Homeland Security’s “Operation Metro Surge.”
But President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem have continued to fault Good in connection with the shooting, which Noem described as an act of self-defense when Good “weaponized” her car to hit ICE officer Jonathan Ross, calling her a “domestic terrorist.”
Multiple videos recorded by witnesses and Ross himself show the moments before the shooting when ICE officers approach Good’s vehicle, which is parked across the roadway. Officers order her to get out of her car. She is heard talking briefly with an officer, saying, “That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you.” When officers reach for the door handles of her car, Good reverses the vehicle and then pulls forward and to the right.
In their statement Tuesday, the Good family’s attorneys described what they say happened next, “As Renée begins to slowly move the vehicle forward, the agent near the front left of the vehicle fires into the vehicle. The agent continues to fire through the driver’s side window as Renée pulls away, with no one in the path of the vehicle.”
Romanucci — whose Minneapolis-based co-counsel is attorney Kevin C. Riach — said Good’s family is seeking transparency.
“People in Minneapolis and across this country truly, truly care about what happened to Renée Good,” Romanucci said in a statement to The Post, “… and are committed to understanding how she could have been killed on the street after dropping her child off at school. They want to know what could and should have been done to let Renée live and pick her child up safely from school that afternoon. As often as possible, our team will promptly and transparently provide updates on what we learn.”
The statement said the law firm is launching a “civil investigation” into Good’s death at the hands of the ICE officer. Based on their investigation, they plan to file a claim against ICE, the federal government and potentially other “responsible parties,” a spokeswoman for the firm said.
The FBI has said it is investigating the shooting, but a number of senior Justice Department prosecutors in D.C. and Minneapolis resigned from their jobs this week after the head of the civil rights division said that office would not be involved in the case.
Minnesota’s top state prosecutors are conducting their own review after the state’s criminal investigative bureau said the FBI excluded them from its investigation. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty and Ellison, the Minnesota attorney general, announced the state-level review Friday, saying it would ensure state authorities have access to investigative materials, such as video and witness statements, if the case merits state-level charges.
“The community is not receiving transparency about this case elsewhere, so our team will provide that to the country,” the law firm said in their statement, promising “to share information learned in the investigation on a rolling basis so that both public officials and concerned individuals across our American communities can see and understand the facts as we learn them.”
Romanucci said he expects to face numerous obstacles.
“It is always challenging to pursue litigation against state and local law enforcement officers because of the many immunities they are afforded. But legal action against the federal government is even more complex,” Romanucci said, calling the process “byzantine” and “time-consuming.”
“Even after following those processes, a lawsuit filed in court is then argued in front of a federal judge — not a jury of community members — to determine how justice is served,” he said, adding, “This process will not deter us in any way from fervently pursuing justice on behalf of Renée Good.”
Ahead of Wednesday’s announcement by their attorneys, Good’s parents, Tim and Donna Ganger of Valley Falls, Kansas, and their family released a statement via their attorneys praising the woman they called “Nae” and “Nae-Nae” as “the beautiful light of our family” who “brought joy to anyone she met.”
“She was relentlessly hopeful and optimistic which was contagious,” they wrote, “with a seemingly infinite capacity for love.”
The family has not yet announced funeral plans.
“Be Good. That’s all Renée wanted to be. Good to her partner, her family, her children and her community. She wanted to see a better world for her kids,” Romanucci said. “As a Christian, she would pray for all of us to do better, to be better. We will honor her memory by seeking accountability and change in her name.”
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