Renee Good was concerned about the actions of immigration agents in Minneapolis, said Antonio M. Romanucci, a lawyer for her family, but she and her partner “weren’t following anybody around” on the morning that Ms. Good was fatally shot by one of those agents.
The killing of Ms. Good, 37, touched off tense protests in Minneapolis and revealed the vastly different frames through which Americans are interpreting President Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The president’s allies immediately defended the shooting as an act of self-defense, with some of them saying Ms. Good was engaged in “domestic terrorism.” Many local and state officials have dismissed the federal narrative and defended Ms. Good.
But for the first week after the shooting, as Ms. Good’s name appeared in international headlines and as immigration agents continued to flood into Minnesota, relatively little was known about Ms. Good herself.
In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Romanucci, who is representing Ms. Good’s parents, her partner and her siblings, filled in some of those blanks. He described some of Ms. Good’s background, her actions on the day of the shooting and what her family wants to see going forward.
Here are some key moments from that conversation:
‘Asking what’s going on’
Ms. Good and her partner, Becca Good, dropped the child they were raising together off at school on the morning of Jan. 7. They were driving home when they spotted federal agents and stopped, the family’s lawyers have said.
In cities that have been the focus of immigration crackdowns, residents have sometimes shared information about where agents are spotted making arrests. Mr. Romanucci declined to say whether the couple had been alerted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents might be working on the block where they encountered them. But he said that “they weren’t following anybody around.”
Videos published since the shooting show Renee Good in the driver’s seat of a Honda S.U.V. that is partially blocking a residential street. Becca Good is standing outside the vehicle. Both women speak with an agent who walks around the Honda, and Renee Good can be heard telling him, “I’m not mad at you.”
At one point, more agents approach the vehicle and tell Renee Good to get out. The Honda begins moving. Jonathan Ross, an ICE agent who is standing at the front of the car, fatally shoots her.
Mr. Romanucci said he believed that the women had been “exercising their right to assemble” when they stopped that morning.
“That was something that was happening very close to where they live,” he said. “And just like anybody else who lives in the neighborhood, if there’s activity in the neighborhood, they’re going to be asking what’s going on.”
‘They were concerned’
Mr. Romanucci’s office said Renee Good and Becca Good, both U.S. citizens, had moved to Minneapolis in March and were becoming more involved in their new city.
“They thought that Minneapolis would be a better place for their blended family,” Mr. Romanucci said.
The couple was raising a child together, a spokeswoman for the law office said, and though they were not legally married, they were in a committed relationship. The law office said Renee Good had applied and been approved to become a substitute teacher and was also a member of the board at her child’s school.
Mr. Romanucci declined to say whether Renee Good had joined a neighborhood group chat that tracked agents, attended any training sessions about watching ICE, or observed immigration agents before that morning of the shooting.
But he said that “they were engaged with their neighbors about this activity, and they were concerned about it.”
‘Don’t raise the temperature’
Mr. Romanucci said his office had opened a civil investigation into the shooting. He and another lawyer sent federal officials a letter asking them to preserve potential evidence.
The letter said that the family anticipated “legal action” against the United States and the agent who fired the shots, and it listed excessive force and negligence as potential claims.
Mr. Romanucci said that the family’s options included a tort claim against the government or a lawsuit directly against the agent, the latter of which he said was a “difficult and challenging path” given Supreme Court precedent.
Federal officials have repeatedly defended the agent’s actions as lawful and necessary. Mr. Romanucci questioned why the agent was standing in front of the car and why the situation had escalated to the point of gunfire.
“When somebody tells you that ‘I’m not mad at you,’” he said, “you don’t raise the temperature from zero to 100 just because you don’t want them there at that particular point.”
‘Suffering greatly’
Mr. Romanucci said Ms. Good’s family had been “extremely hurt” by descriptions of her as engaging in “domestic terrorism” by some in the Trump administration.
“Somebody who says to to an agent, seconds before she was shot and killed, that ‘I’m not mad at you,’ dude — that is not the definition of those two words,” said Mr. Romanucci, who said that some members of the family had voted for Mr. Trump.
In a statement this week, Ms. Good’s parents and siblings described her as “our protector, our shoulder to cry on and our scintillating source of joy.”
“They’re suffering greatly right now,” Mr. Romanucci said of the family.
He said the family was waiting to receive the results of Ms. Good’s autopsy and that no funeral plans had been announced. Family members declined through the law office to be interviewed.
‘Want to be able to trust’
The F.B.I. is investigating the shooting on its own and has resisted calls from local and state officials to include the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in its inquiry, as was initially planned.
“I want to be able to trust the federal government being the only investigator,” Mr. Romanucci said. “But because they’re playing this so close to the vest, they are raising questions as to whether or not this will be unbiased and fair and achieve the just result.”
Since the shooting, the Justice Department has looked into Renee Good’s possible ties to activist groups, people familiar with the situation have said. And in Minnesota this week, six federal prosecutors submitted resignations over a Justice Department push to investigate Becca Good.
Mr. Romanucci said Becca Good had not been interviewed by investigators, though she spoke briefly with law enforcement officers shortly after the shooting. He said Becca Good had not been told by officials that she is a target of any investigation.
“She has not received any notice whatsoever,” Mr. Romanucci said. “And I think that even the thought of that is unimaginable. That would just be sort of blaming the victim.”
Ernesto Londoño and Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.
Mitch Smith is a Chicago-based national correspondent for The Times, covering the Midwest and Great Plains.
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