Was Alex pretti fired from VA hospital
Executive summary
There is no reporting in the provided sources that Alex Pretti was fired from the Minneapolis VA Health Care System; every available account identifies him as an ICU nurse employed at the VA until his death and describes colleagues and veterans mourning a current VA caregiver [1] [2] [3] [4]. If assertions exist elsewhere that he was fired, those claims are not documented in the material supplied and therefore cannot be confirmed here (limitation noted).
1. What the reporting actually says about Pretti’s employment
Multiple national and local outlets reporting on the killing consistently describe Alex Jeffrey Pretti as a registered nurse who worked in the intensive-care unit at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center; profiles, obituaries and union statements frame him as an active VA ICU nurse and colleague to other clinicians at that hospital [1] [2] [3] [5]. Veteran patients and family members quoted in People and CBS Minnesota recall recent care from Pretti, with at least one veteran saying Pretti treated him just two weeks before the shooting—an anecdote that reinforces the reporting depiction of Pretti as a current VA caregiver [6] [7]. Health-care unions and professional organizations, including National Nurses United and the Oregon Nurses Association, described Pretti as a VA nurse in their statements condemning the killing, language that would be unlikely if he had been an ex-employee and those organizations had contradicted that fact [8] [9] [3].
2. How colleagues and veterans characterize his role and continuity at the VA
Physicians and researchers who worked alongside Pretti portray a continuous professional relationship: Dimitri Drekonja, a VA infectious-disease chief, described long collaboration and remembered Pretti as an “outstanding” nurse, and colleagues recounted seeing him transition from research roles to clinical nursing—accounts that read as contemporaneous workplace testimony rather than retrospective memories of a former employee [1] [5]. Reports of vigils and tributes at or near VA circles, and the VA’s own communications about no immediate memorial plans at the hospital, further anchor the narrative that Pretti was an identifiable member of the Minneapolis VA workforce at the time of his death [5] [4].
3. Claims, counterclaims, and what’s not in the record
Some federal statements about the incident have been sharply disputed by Pretti’s family and by the footage circulating online, prompting family statements that accused the administration of “sickening lies” about their son; those disputes concern the circumstances of the shooting, not his employment status, and the sources provided do not contain any official claim that he had been terminated from the VA prior to the incident [10] [11]. No source in the supplied reporting documents a firing, a disciplinary action that led to separation, or any VA personnel notice indicating Pretti was no longer employed; absence of such evidence in these accounts is notable but not dispositive about every claim outside this corpus [2] [3].
4. Why the question might arise and how to evaluate it
The question of whether Pretti was fired likely emerges in polarized coverage and social-media threads where partial information, official statements, and family rebuttals compete; verifying employment status requires direct VA personnel records or an explicit statement from VA HR, neither of which are present in the provided reporting, so reliance on credible contemporaneous coverage is the best available indicator—those outlets consistently identify him as an ICU nurse employed at the VA [1] [2] [4]. Given the consistent portrait across diverse publications—local outlets, national newspapers, veteran-focused press, and nursing unions—the balance of documented reporting supports the conclusion that Alex Pretti was not reported to have been fired from the VA in these sources [1] [5] [8].
5. Bottom line and reporting limitations
Based on the supplied sources, there is no evidence that Alex Pretti was fired from the Minneapolis VA Medical Center; all cited coverage refers to him as an ICU nurse who cared for veterans and who was employed at the VA until his death [1] [2] [3]. This assessment is constrained to the material provided: if an explicit claim of firing exists in other documents or official personnel files not included here, that claim cannot be evaluated in this analysis and would require documentary proof from VA records or a credible VA spokesperson to overturn the consistent reporting cited (limitation acknowledged) [5] [6].