‘Worse and worse for White House’: Damning new video reveals run-up to ICE shooting

More video showing the run-up to Alex Pretti’s shooting was revealed Tuesday — and it further contradicts Trump administration claims about the killing by immigration agents.

The 37-year-old nurse was shot and killed Saturday by a federal officer during a confrontation in Minneapolis, and CNN’s Tom Foreman analyzed the new footage that starts about seven minutes before the fatal encounter.

“This video just gets worse and worse and worse for the White House and what they’ve been claiming,” Foreman said. “Let’s start with the general setup here. It’s about seven minutes of video before all of this happens, and it puts everything in context.

“Let’s start first with the general street scene here and let this play out. What had happened, according to witnesses, is that a group of ICE agents had been in pursuit of somebody who they say was an undocumented immigrant, who they say was dangerous. He ran into a building there where the door was locked by people inside, and they couldn’t get inside.

“Pretti and the other protesters, according to what we heard, were across the street shooting video. They were at some distance here watching it, and they were seeing this evolve on the other side of the street.”

Foreman directed viewers to look at an image of an officer holding a pepper spray canister, and pointed out that witnesses said a small group of observers were standing across the street.

“According to witnesses, only about 10 people across the street from them, not pushing up on them, not necessarily crowding them,” he said. “You hear the whistles in the background. It’s a warning sign that many protesters have out there to say ICE is in the area. Now, what happens when you follow the next piece of the video here is that the agents, according to witnesses, and when you watch the video, they crossed the street to engage with Pretti and the other people over there, so Pretti is there.

“The agents come across and engage with them, and that’s when you see this moment where one of the agents pushes Pretti off the road and you hear Pretti yelling, ‘Don’t push me,’ and he says, ‘I’m not in traffic, you’re in traffic. You came in traffic to come over and push me.’”

The video contradicts administration claims that Pretti and others gathered in the area and were interfering with immigration enforcement, Foreman said.

“So again, the notion of this being a riot, which we’ve heard many times,” Foreman said. “They may not like it, but this is hardly the definition of a riot. Then another person gets knocked to the ground and pinned down. If you look at that video, Pretti yells out in this video, ‘Hey, leave her alone,’ but he doesn’t grab an officer. He doesn’t approach officers. He just says leave her alone while they’re pinning this person down. So again, all the indications here in this video, which is again, six or seven minutes before the shooting, shows all of the aggression coming from the officers aimed at these people.”

“Then finally we move to the moment where they grabbed Pretti as he’s trying to help a person who has also been pushed down,” Foreman continued. “When you see that video, the agents storm in, look, they’re shoving people. This woman goes to the ground, Pretti goes to help her. Remember he’s a nurse, he’s trying to help this woman who’s down on the ground and the agents grab him while his back is turned and drag him into the center of people, where they’re all gathered around here.

“You can see one of them starts striking him in the head with some sort of device, or you see him smacking somebody in the head here, and then finally you reach the point where the gunfire breaks out.”

“So was it a riot?” the correspondent added. “It certainly doesn’t look like one, unless you’re talking about a riot of the officers themselves. Was Pretti, did he have a weapon out that he was showing anybody? No, there’s no evidence of that in any of the video. Was he grabbing or attacking the officers? No, there’s no evidence of any of that. As I said, the more video we get, the worse and worse and worse it looks for the White House account of what went on.”