DHS Shooting Victim in Minneapolis Was a ‘Sweet’ and ‘Principled Person’
Zeteo spoke with two doctors who worked with Alex Pretti, a nurse who is the latest victim of Trump’s violent invasion of Minnesota.
As Donald Trump’s administration leads a smear campaign against Alex Pretti, the latest fatality in Trump’s invasion of Minneapolis, Zeteo spoke with two doctors who knew the victim to shed light on the man whom federal agents senselessly killed on Saturday.
“He was just a super nice guy, a super capable nurse,” Dimitri Drekonja, a doctor who knew and worked alongside Pretti, told Zeteo. “And we are in a worse place for him being killed.”
Agents from Trump’s Department of Homeland Security shot and killed Pretti Saturday morning. Bystander videos depict a gruesome scene in which Pretti was swarmed by a mob of agents, who shot him repeatedly. Multiple shots appeared to have been fired at him when he was already lying motionless on the ground.
Pretti, 37, is the third person whom Trump’s immigration agents have shot in Minneapolis in recent weeks, and the second fatality. On Jan. 7, an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in her vehicle as she attempted to flee the scene. Good’s killing has inspired mass protests and resistance against Trump’s increasingly violent ICE invasion in Minneapolis and blue cities around the country.
The Trump DHS has claimed that Pretti was armed, with Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino claiming the agents fired “defensive shots” – a claim that will ring false to anyone who watches videos of the shooting circulating online. Minnesota is an open-carry state, and Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara said Saturday that police believe Pretti was a “lawful gun owner with a permit to carry.”
‘Go Out of His Way to Help’
Pretti worked as a nurse in an intensive care unit. In 2017, he was hired to support a Veterans Affairs medical trial, later moving on to work in critical-care nursing, according to the doctors who brought him on board.
Drekonja said Pretti was always a cheerful, optimistic presence, who helped present a positive, non-hierarchical atmosphere for other trainees. He “would go out of his way to help,” Drekonja told Zeteo, adding that he “was quick with a joke, and we had shared interests in the outdoors and especially mountain biking.”
“I’m honestly trying to think back, have I had a negative interaction with him? And I have not,” said Drekonja, adding, “Nurses, especially critical care nurses, are among the best. They gravitate there because they want to help people when they really need it.”
Dr. Aasma Shaukat, who co-led the trial with Drekonja, echoed the sentiment. “He was just so sincere and very kind, just a sweet young man and eager to learn,” she told Zeteo.
Shaukat said that Pretti earned more responsibilities because of his enthusiasm for taking care of patients, and because “he always rose to the level above and beyond what we expected of him.”
“It really, truly gave him joy to interact with patients,” she recalled.
The Trump administration is attempting to paint a very different picture of the nurse his agents killed.
By Saturday afternoon, some Trump administration personnel had already begun scouring the internet and other resources trying to find information on Pretti, including social media posts, that could tie him to what Team Trump call “extremists,” two sources familiar with the matter tell Zeteo. Furthermore, according to two other sources with knowledge of the situation, top officials in the Trump White House reminded their federal colleagues in and outside the West Wing that Pretti should be referred to as a “terrorist” in written statements and public messaging, no matter his background.
“They don’t care if he was a nurse,” says one of the recipients of this guidance. “He is someone the agencies are calling a domestic terrorist, apparently.”
‘A Very Principled Person’
Shaukat, for her part, said it speaks to Pretti’s character that he would stand up for his neighbors in Minneapolis amid Trump’s incursion.
“You could not think of a kinder, gentler, sweeter person, but I could see that, you know, he was probably trying to defuse the situation or defend somebody or protect somebody, or had run up because of his nursing role,” she said. “And he was a very principled person and very righteous.”
Shaukat continued: “Knowing Alex, I know there’s no way he would have provoked or done anything to bring this on.”
The last time Shaukat saw Alex, she said, was last year. “He was very happy. He had been going along on his nursing career, and he was feeling like things were falling into place. He was looking forward to getting better jobs, and finally paying off his student loans, getting his own place and his car, and kind of moving up in life. So we were very happy for him.”
“His life was just starting,” said Shaukat. “He was on his way up, and this was like the sweetest point in his life. All the effort he had put in was now starting to pay off, and he was seeing it unfold. And he could not be more excited about his future.”
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