They Executed Him in Broad Daylight

Alex Pretti was a good man.

Mike Nellis

Some weeks the weight of this country feels almost too heavy to carry. This is one of them. After federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti — a 37-year-old ICU nurse and U.S. citizen — on a Minneapolis street this weekend, I’m left with a grief that feels too big for language. Rage, sorrow, numbness — they blur together until there’s no clean word for what’s sitting in my chest.

And I want to make this personal for a second — because on Saturday, Alex’s family released a statement. It was more gracious, more restrained than anything I could imagine writing if my own son had been murdered by the federal government.

“I do not throw around the ‘hero’ term lightly. However, his last thought and act was to protect a woman. The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He had his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down, all while being pepper sprayed.”

I had just had dinner with my wife and son when I read the statement. I pulled it up on my phone, read it on the couch, and I just broke down in tears.

https://endlessurgency.com/p/they-executed-him-in-broad-daylight