A doctor who lives near the scene where Alex Jeffrey Pretti was shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday described in a sworn court filing how agents initially hesitated and asked for proof of a medical license when the doctor tried to approach and render aid. And a person who said they were standing near Mr. Pretti disputed the Department of Homeland Security’s account of that incident in another sworn court filing.
The shooting of Mr. Pretti, 37, renewed protests and clashes with law enforcement in a city where tensions over aggressive federal immigration action are high. Video footage of the encounter appeared to contradict parts of the federal government’s narrative of what happened, and the latest court filings raised further questions.
The doctor, whose name was redacted from the publicly available version of the court filing, described themselves as a pediatrician and said they had witnessed parts of the encounter from a nearby apartment. Though their view was from a distance, they described seeing a man being shoved to the ground and then shot several times. After the gunfire, they described going outside, telling an agent that they were a physician and asking to check the person who had been shot.
The doctor said they were initially turned down, but eventually allowed to go to the person after being patted down.
“Normally, I would not have been so persistent,” the doctor said in their statement, “but as a physician, I felt a professional and moral obligation to help this man, especially since none of the agents were helping him.”
The doctor described checking for a pulse, finding none, and then beginning C.P.R. The man appeared to have been shot several times, the doctor said. Shortly after he started C.P.R., emergency medical personnel arrived and took over, the doctor said.
After the shooting, the doctor described returning home as protests intensified.
“I was sobbing and shaking uncontrollably,” they said in the statement.
Once tear gas began seeping into their apartment from the street below, they said they got in a car and drove to a friend’s home.
“I am not sure when I will return to my apartment,” the doctor wrote. “I do not feel safe in my city.”
Almost immediately after agents shot Mr. Pretti on Saturday morning, federal officials claimed that he had endangered agents with a gun he was carrying, and some later accused him of “domestic terrorism.”
But videos on social media that were verified by The New York Times appear to contradict portions of the Department of Homeland Security’s account of the shooting, and the Minneapolis police chief, Brian O’Hara, said that Mr. Pretti was believed to be licensed to legally carry a gun.
Another person who said they witnessed the shooting also submitted a sworn statement in court on Saturday. Like the doctor’s statement, it was filed as part of a lawsuit challenging federal agents’ interactions with protesters.
“I have read the statement from D.H.S. about what happened and it is wrong,” said that person, who described themselves as a children’s entertainer specializing in face painting. “The man did not approach the agents with a gun. He approached them with a camera. He was just trying to help a woman get up and they took him to the ground.”
That witness described hearing whistles — which Minneapolis residents have used to alert people to the presence of immigration agents — and going toward the noise to observe and record on Saturday morning.
The person said they walked toward an area where someone was being thrown to the ground and then started filming. When an agent asked them to move back, the witness said, they slowly did so. Another man who was in the street and who was also recording remained there and continued filming, the witness said.
“The man stayed in the street, filming as the other observers I mentioned earlier were being forced backward by another ICE agent threatening them with pepper spray,” the witness statement said. “The man went closer to support them as they got threatened, just with his camera out. I didn’t see him reach for or hold a gun.”
One person was thrown to the ground by an agent, the witness said, and pepper spray was used. The man who had been filming — almost certainly Mr. Pretti, though no name was used in the court filing — tried to help the person who had fallen, the statement said.
“The agents pulled the man on the ground,” the statement said, adding that the witness was perhaps five feet away. “I didn’t see him touch any of them — he wasn’t even turned toward them. It didn’t look like he was trying to resist, just trying to help the woman up. I didn’t see him with a gun. They threw him to the ground. Four or five agents had him on the ground and they just started shooting him. They shot him so many times.”
The court filing said that a video taken by the witness was also filed with the court, but that footage was not immediately accessible through an online court records system.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the witness statements.
Those sworn statements were filed as part of a lawsuit backed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota that accused federal agents of repeatedly violating protesters’ rights during a recent surge of immigration enforcement. The federal judge hearing that case issued an injunction earlier this month that imposed restrictions on agents. The Trump administration appealed, and an appellate court issued an administrative stay this week that blocked the injunction.
On Saturday, lawyers for the protesters filed an emergency motion that asked the appellate court to allow the injunction to go back into effect.
Mitch Smith is a Chicago-based national correspondent for The Times, covering the Midwest and Great Plains.
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