On Monday, Minnesota prosecutors revealed significant advancements in their investigation into the tragic shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, which occurred amidst protests against federal immigration enforcement measures in the state earlier this year.
“Thanks to the cooperation with our federal partners, we have successfully acquired the hard drives containing previously unreleased evidence related to the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, as well as the shooting incident involving Julio Sosa-Celis,” announced Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty. “Additionally, we have now secured some physical evidence that had been out of our reach, including Renee Good’s vehicle.”
Prior to this development, federal authorities had withheld various pieces of evidence, including witness statements, police body camera footage, and other critical information related to the cases.
Moriarty confirmed that local and state investigators now have access to the damaged car that belonged to Good, further aiding their investigation.
Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was fatally shot in her vehicle as she departed an anti-immigration enforcement demonstration in Minneapolis on January 7. This tragic event unfolded as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents intensified their activities in the area.
Her death and that of Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse shot and killed by federal officers just weeks later during a Jan. 24 protest, sparked outrage across the country and calls to rein in immigration enforcement.
“The wonderful thing now is we have all the evidence,” Moriarty said.
Investigators are going through all the evidence, including hard drives with statements, hours of video recorded by body-worn cameras and the physical car Good was driving, Moriarty said.
“We need transparency. We need cooperation. Our community needs it,” she said. “Our democracy requires it.”
At the end of June, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Moriarty asked a federal judge to push out the deadlines in their lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice because they said they were in the midst of recently reinitiated “ongoing discussions” with the FBI about information sharing.
Those ongoing discussions with the FBI about information sharing are likely to affect Minnesota’s request for summary judgment in the case, Ellison and Moriarty wrote in their motion to the court.
The attorneys representing the federal government signed onto the motion.
Ellison said he remains “deeply troubled that the federal government spent more than half a year attempting to conceal this evidence from state investigators.”
“It should never have taken this long for Minnesota law enforcement to gain access to the federal government’s evidence,” he said in a statement. “I hope that this is the beginning of a major course correction on the part of the federal government.”
There have been at least eight deaths since the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement campaign began last year, but nobody has been charged in connection with them.
A Minneapolis resident, Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, was also shot and injured in his home while ICE agents were in pursuit of another man.
In May, Christian Castro, an ICE agent, was arrested and charged with assault as well as falsely reporting a crime in connection with that Jan. 14 nonfatal shooting.
Prosecutors say Castro, 52, fired through a home’s front door and shot Sosa-Celis in the thigh.
In April, Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr., another ICE agent, was charged with pointing his gun at a motorist and passenger on a Minneapolis highway.
Prosecutors said at the time it was the first criminal case against a federal officer involved in the Minnesota immigration crackdown.
On Monday, ICE was involved in the fatal shooting in Maine, according to state House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, a Democrat.
Details of what transpired in Biddeford, a coastal city of about 23,000 people roughly 15 miles (24 kilometers) southwest of Portland, remain unclear.
Last week, an ICE agent in Houston fatally shot a Mexican national who had lived in the U.S. for decades as the homebuilder drove his construction crew to a job site.
The federal Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, has acknowledged officers were looking for someone else when they attempted to stop Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s vehicle. The agency maintains Salgado Araujo rammed an ICE vehicle, prompting an officer to open fire in self-defense.