The parents of a man fatally shot by federal officers while protesting in Minneapolis on Saturday identified him as Alex Jeffrey Pretti, the Minnesota Star Tribune reports. Pretti was a US citizen and Minneapolis resident who worked as a nurse in a Veterans Affairs intensive care unit. "He cared about people deeply and he was very upset with what was happening in Minneapolis and throughout the United States with ICE, as millions of other people are upset," said his father, Michael, per the AP. "He felt that doing the protesting was a way to express that, you know, his care for others."
Law enforcement officials said Pretti, who was born in Illinois, had no serious criminal record; Police Chief Brian O'Hara said a search showed only parking tickets. The Department of Homeland Security said the man shot was armed. O'Hara said the man was a "lawful gun owner" who had a permit. Pretti began joining the protests in Minneapolis after Renee Good was shot to death by a federal agent earlier this month. Family members said that although Pretti had a permit to carry a concealed handgun, they had not known him to carry his gun. The officer who fatally shot him is an eight-year veteran of the Border Patrol, federal officials said, per the AP.
Pretti, 37, was an avid outdoorsman who loved getting into adventures with Joule, his Catahoula Leopard dog, until the pet's recent death, the family said. A person who worked with him at the VA hospital in Minneapolis said Pretti cared about his work and his patients, per the New York Times. "He was a really great colleague and a really great friend," Dimitri Drekonja said. "The default look on his face was a smile."
Pretti's parents, who live in Wisconsin, had asked him to be careful at the protests, per the AP. "We had this discussion with him two weeks ago or so, you know, that go ahead and protest, but do not engage, do not do anything stupid, basically," Michael Pretti said. "And he said he knows that. He knew that."
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
