New footage shows Alex Pretti taunting ICE agents for carrying pepper spray while daring them to ‘soak me, motherf***er’ just 11 days before the ICU nurse was fatally shot.
The new perspective comes just hours after Pretti’s family confirmed their son was the 37-year-old man spitting at an ICE vehicle before smashing the tail light in the newly unearthed footage.
The video shows Pretti shouting ‘f*** you!’ at the agents, before yelling: ‘What the f*** is wrong with you? Every decision you’ve made in your life is f***ing wrong!’
He also refers to one of the agents as a ‘pepper spray b****’ and ‘f***ing trash’ as they get into their SUVs to leave the premises.
Pretti then yelled: ‘F***ing soak me, motherf***er!’
The sound of shattered plastic can then be heard in the footage as the SUV turns away and the damaged tail light is visible.
An agent leaps from the back door as Pretti holds up a middle finger and yells ‘f*** you.’
Multiple agents then converge on Pretti and attack him as shocked bystanders scream in the background.
In the first clip posted on Wednesday, Pretti’s hat comes off and the top of his head matches the receding hairline displayed in video from Saturday that showed his fatal confrontation with Border Patrol officers.
A different angle is shown of Alex Pretti’s January 13 confrontation with ICE agents, filmed just 11 days before his death
Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, was killed on January 24 after being shot ten times by Department of Homeland Security officers
Surrounding officers then fired tear gas and pepper balls into the crowd while agents released Pretti from their grip and set him free.
Shortly after, the agents begin to disperse. Pretti, who appeared to have a gun in his waistband as he did the day of the shooting, then picked up his belongings that came off in the scuffle and walked away.
The Daily Mail spoke to Max Shapiro, a Minneapolis tax attorney who filmed the original clip, about what he saw that day.
Shapiro’s son attends daycare not far from where he filmed and participates in a group Signal chat of parents who have been ‘patrolling the corners near the entrances’ for ICE agents.
After he dropped off his son and went to work, a member of the group chat said that ICE had showed up a block from his son’s daycare.
‘I ended up going to observe and as I got there, got there right at the moment where Mr Pretti was being confronted and assaulted by some ICE individuals,’ Shapiro said.
Shapiro, who said he’d never met Pretti before, began filming on his phone just after Pretti kicked out the taillight in a crowd of about 15 people.
He claimed that everything had been ‘orderly and calm’ for the majority of his time observing, until they began to pack up and leave, when Pretti kicked out the SUV tail light.
After hurling several expletives at the agents, they converge on him after he kicks the tail light of a federal SUV
Shortly after, the agents begin to disperse. Pretti, who appeared to have a gun in his waistband as he did the day of the shooting, then picked up his belongings that came off in the scuffle and walked away
‘I wouldn’t say it was an overly hostile interaction until they decided not to leave, and then turn it into a little bit more of a hostile situation.’
‘The observers were pretty distraught and screaming,’ he continued, adding that the officers began trying to get the crowd back, but their directives were largely drowned out in whistles and shouts.
Shapiro, who said he lives a mile from where the video takes place, didn’t know whether ICE agents would have recognized Pretti from that interaction 11 days later.
‘There has been so much ICE activity in Minneapolis that, most everyone probably has a video like that on their phone. This is not a an isolated incident. There are things that are happening every single day where people are recording and observing activity,’ he said.
He added that, while he’s not looking for other instances of confrontations between Minneapolis residents and ICE agents, he believes observers should continue protesting and filming federal agents.
‘I think it’s very important that people continue to do that. Because we need to document these types of instances and make sure that whatever the results comes from, this operation that, People understand what’s happening,’ he said.
‘I don’t want to observe stuff like that. I don’t want to have to encounter that.’
Pretti’s attendance in the initial clip was confirmed with the help of BBC facial recognition software and published in a joint effort between the British public broadcaster and The News Movement.
In the original footage, you can see the moment an anti-ICE protestor, confirmed to be Alex Pretti, was shouting at federal officers on January 13 in Minneapolis. The video was filmed by The News Movement, who were at the scene
Pretti was seen spitting on a federal vehicle before kicking its taillight and causing it to fall off – triggering officers to tackle him to the ground
Reporter Dan Ming was on the scene to cover the ongoing protests in Minneapolis and can be seen at the beginning of the clip. He confirmed his attendance in an email sent to the Daily Mail.
Steve Schleicher, a former federal prosecutor who secured the conviction of Officer Derek Chauvin in the George Floyd case, is representing Pretti’s family pro bono.
‘A week before Alex was gunned down in the street – despite posing no threat to anyone – he was violently assaulted by a group of ICE agents,’ said Schleicher in response to the clip.
‘Nothing that happened a full week before could possibly have justified Alex’s killing at the hands of ICE on Jan 24,’ he added.
The Department of Homeland Security said that they are investigating the footage.
Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, was killed on January 24 after being shot ten times by Department of Homeland Security officers.
The gun he was lawfully carrying was removed from his holster, before an unnamed agent shot him dead in broad daylight.
The officers he had been fighting with what appeared to be ICE or Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents.
The two Border Patrol agents who shot and killed Pretti in Minneapolis have been placed on administrative leave
On Tuesday, it was revealed Pretti had an altercation with federal officers that saw him break a rib before his killing.
It could not be immediately confirmed whether the new clip depicts the moment of the bone breakage and whether it was filmed before or afterwards.
Pretti did not appear to be arrested for causing damage to federal property.
His death, which came just weeks after Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent on January 7, sparked an immediate uproar across the country.
A litany of criticism on both sides of the political line has put pressure on the Trump administration to make changes to the ongoing immigration crackdown in the US.
It was also revealed on Wednesday that the two Border Patrol agents who killed Pretti have been placed on administrative leave.
Sources in Homeland Security confirmed to the Daily Mail that the agents, who have not been identified, were suspended amid an investigation into the shooting.
The agents were reportedly given mental health support as standard procedure, and were placed on automatic administrative leave for at least three days.
When the agents return, they will not be allowed out on the field and will be given desk roles, sources say.
The ICE officer involved in Good’s shooting, Jonathan Ross, was placed on administrative leave, however following Pretti’s death President Trump called for a full investigation into the latest incident.
Trump officials initially attempted to portray Pretti as a ‘domestic terrorist’ because he had a legally-owned firearm at the time he was shot, however a new government report has undermined allegations he ‘brandished’ the weapon.
The new report alleged that when an officer shouted ‘gun’ during his arrest, there was no evidence Pretti had taken it off his hip.
Footage of the shooting that circulated social media appeared to show a border patrol agent had disarmed Pretti moments before he was shot several times in the back.
According to the Daily Mail/JL Partners poll conducted of over 1,000 American voters on Monday, 54 percent believe that the federal law enforcement murdered Pretti. The margin of error is 3.1 percent.
More than one in five Republicans, 22 percent, said Pretti’s killing constituted murder.
Just 21 percent of all respondents indicated that shooting and killing the nurse was justified.
