A doctor who witnessed the brutal shooting of Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents says that the agents didn’t even bother trying to save the victim’s life as he bled out on the ground — because they were too busy counting the bullet wounds.
The harrowing testimony, detailed in a sworn court filing, contradicts key details in the accounts given by the Department of Homeland Security and top officials in the Trump administration, which insist that the 37-year-old ICU nurse threatened agents and attempted to reach for his gun during an altercation in Minneapolis on Saturday.
According to the witness, a 29-year-old physician who isn’t identified by name in the court document, Pretti was yelling at the agents but did not attack them or brandish any sort of weapon before the situation escalated fatally.
“Suddenly, an ICE agent shoved him to the ground,” the witness said, referring to the Border Patrol officers. “My view of the altercation was partially obstructed, but after a few seconds, I saw at least four ICE agents point guns at the man. I then saw the agents shoot the man at least six or seven times.”
When he rushed to the scene and told Border Patrol he was a physician and wanted to attend to the victim, the agents demanded to see his physician’s license — “which I obviously didn’t have,” he said.
Shockingly, he noticed that “none of the ICE agents who were near the victim were performing CPR” despite him clearly being in “critical condition,” so the doctor continued his protests.
“Normally, I would not have been so persistent, but as a physician, I felt a professional and moral obligation to help this man,” he said, “especially since none of the agents were helping him.”
Once the agents finally let him through, the first red flag that jumped out at him was that the victim was lying on his side.
“That is not standard practice when a victim has been shot. Checking for a pulse and administering CPR is standard practice,” he said. “Instead of doing either of those things, the ICE agents appeared to be counting his bullet wounds.”
The doctor checked for a pulse, found that Pretti had none, and immediately began CPR. According to the physician, Pretti had at least three bullet wounds in his back, another on his upper left chest, and possibly one on his neck. The doctor left after EMS arrived at the scene and took charge.
He described how the scene had left him shaken afterwards.
“When I returned to my apartment, I was extremely distraught,” the doctor said. “I was sobbing and shaking uncontrollably.”
Soon, tear gas began to flood into his apartment from a protest outside, and he left to drive to a friend’s house, “still crying and shaking” and “barely able to speak.”
Pretti’s killing has added to the intense backlash against ICE and Border Patrol’s brutal crackdown in Minneapolis, where the federal agents have clashed with onlookers, rounded up both citizen and non-citizen children, and shot and killed another protestor, 37-year-old Renee Good.
Contradicting the mountains of video evidence taken at the scene, the DHS maintains that Pretti, a nurse that treated sick and wounded veterans at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” Agency secretary Kristi Noem called his actions “domestic terrorism,” and White House Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller accused him of being an “assassin.”
The doctor wholeheartedly disagrees.
“The victim was not actively threatening ICE agents or the public — he was just yelling at the agents because he objected to ICE’s presence in our city,” he said in the filing.
“I am not sure when I will return to my apartment,” he added. “I do not feel safe in my city.”
More on immigration: ICE Is Scanning Civilians’ Faces, Telling Them They’re Being Entered Into a Terrorism Database
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