The Lie of an Attack - How Security Cameras, Investigations and Videos Expose the Deadly ICE Operation

Multiple recordings from private security cameras and from different angles now draw a clear, internally consistent picture of the events in Minneapolis. They show that Renee Nicole Good did not attempt to run over an officer of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The decisive new camera angle captures the seconds before the shots were fired and contradicts the official account of the U.S. government on a central point. The SUV of the 37-year-old mother is standing crosswise on Portland Avenue. The vehicle begins to move slowly, without steering toward an officer. An agent is standing in front of the car, but is neither hit nor brushed. The car passes him without contact. Forensic analyses now confirm that there was no collision. The claim that an officer was struck or threatened cannot be substantiated by the available video material.

Nevertheless, an ICE officer draws his weapon and fires at close range into the interior of the vehicle. The driver is hit while the car continues to roll. The SUV later crashes into two parked vehicles and comes to a stop. Good is left severely injured inside her car. She is taken to Hennepin County Medical Center with life-threatening gunshot wounds to the head, where she dies shortly afterward. The Trump administration’s portrayal of the incident as an act of “domestic terrorism” finds no basis in these sequences. The videos show no attack, no deliberate driving toward officers, no reckless acceleration. They show a woman trying to remove herself from a situation in which she was suddenly confronted by federal agents.

The minutes before the fatal shots can now also be reconstructed. The security camera shows that Renee Good first pulled over to the right side of the road and allowed a person to exit from the passenger side. She then began to turn around, which is why her vehicle was positioned crosswise in the street. During this time, she allowed other cars to pass. Only then did vehicles of the immigration authorities stop, and agents got out and approached her on foot.

As the agents came toward her, Good reversed, apparently to angle to the right and drive away. The car moved slowly and in a controlled manner. There was no sudden acceleration and no contact with an officer. Despite this, an agent immediately drew his weapon and fired.

The identity of the shooter is now also known. He is Jonathan Ross, a veteran of the Iraq war and a longtime federal officer. Ross has served for nearly two decades with border enforcement and immigration authorities and has worked as a deportation officer with ICE since 2015. Federal authorities initially did not publicly release his name. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem nevertheless defended the deadly use of force early on and referred to an incident from the previous summer in which an officer had been dragged by a fleeing vehicle. A spokesperson for her department later confirmed that Noem was referring to the case in Bloomington, Minnesota - and that the officer injured in that incident was Jonathan Ross.

Die Staatsanwältin von Hennepin County, Mary Moriarty, widersprach der Darstellung aus Washington, wonach der ICE-Beamte, der Renee Good erschoss, über vollständige rechtliche Immunität verfüge, und stellte klar, dass dies so nicht zutreffe. Es sei noch zu früh, um über eine mögliche Anklage gegen Jonathan Ross zu entscheiden, doch eine automatische Abschirmung vor strafrechtlicher Verantwortung gebe es in diesem Fall nicht.

Noem and other representatives of the Trump administration stated that the shooter acted according to his training and believed the driver intended to run him or other agents over. It is precisely this assumption that is now being called into question by the new video recordings and the forensic analysis. They show no moment in which an officer was actually struck by the vehicle. The fatal use of a firearm is now being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In Minneapolis and beyond, demonstrators are calling for criminal consequences for the shooter. Authorities in the state of Minnesota have also announced their own investigations, after the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office was removed from the case. What remains is a dead woman, a family without a mother - and an official justification that continues to collapse with every new image, every investigation and every analysis.