Connor Janeksela was at home on Portland Avenue in southern Minneapolis when he heard the familiar car horns and whistles.
For weeks, residents opposed to the recent surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents there had been making noise to alert neighbors to the presence of federal officials. So when he stepped onto his porch, Mr. Janeksela, 30, was not surprised to see what looked like a convoy of federal vehicles.
A woman driving her own vehicle was on the road in front of them, he said, and agents yelled at her to move. They approached her car, a Honda Pilot, on foot.
“One of the ICE agents tried to rip her door open,” Mr. Janeksela said, “and another one got in front of the vehicle and then shouted ‘stop,’ before firing three times within a second of saying ‘stop.’”
Then, he saw the woman’s car accelerate before it crashed into a parked car, he said.
Homeland security officials, as well as President Trump, said that the federal agent had fired on the woman in self-defense. But city and state officials, including Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis and Gov. Tim Walz, challenged that and said that federal officials were causing chaos.
What was undebatable was the death of the driver.
“After everything kind of settled down, I had walked down the block a little bit, and I could see a bullet hole in the driver’s side windshield,” Mr. Janeksela said.
He took grainy photos that show a person slumped over in the car and what was apparently blood smeared on its deployed airbag.
Now, the people who live in the neighborhood are left to make sense of the violence that unfolded in front of them.
“There’s a big sense of helplessness and hopelessness there,” Mr. Janeksela said. “I’m standing there watching this happen, and there’s nothing I can do.”
Jacey Fortin covers a wide range of subjects for The Times, including extreme weather, court cases and state politics across the country.
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