Did alex pretti kick out an ice agent’s taillights
Executive summary
Newly published and widely verified video footage shows Alex Pretti confronting federal immigration agents at a Minneapolis protest on Jan. 13 and kicking the taillight of an agents’ SUV, breaking the light, an act captured by multiple outlets that confirmed the clip was filmed in Minneapolis [1][2][3]. Reporting and video verification by organizations including BBC/CBS and The New York Times place the incident 11 days before Pretti was fatally shot, but do not establish that the same officers from Jan. 13 were involved in the later killing nor that the earlier act justified subsequent use of force [2][4][1].
1. The footage and the consensus among news organizations
Several news organizations obtained and verified the same clip showing a man identified as Alex Pretti shouting at agents, spitting, and delivering two kicks to the rear corner of a federal SUV as it pulls away, with one kick shattering the red plastic taillight so it hung or fell off in the footage; BBC and CBS News partners confirmed the video’s location and identity of the person in it [1][2][3]. Outlets from The New York Times to PBS, NBC, Fortune and MPR describe the same sequence: Pretti confronting federal immigration officers and damaging the vehicle’s taillight on Jan. 13 [1][4][3][5][6].
2. Who the vehicle belonged to and how sources label the officers
Reporting uniformly describes the vehicles as belonging to federal immigration authorities — variously identified as ICE, Homeland Security Investigations, Border Patrol, or federal agents — and labels the scene an interaction between Pretti and federal immigration officers rather than a private citizen’s car incident [4][1][3]. Some outlets emphasize “ICE” specifically [7][8], while others use the broader “federal immigration agents” descriptor; Homeland Security Investigations said it is reviewing the videos, according to reporting [4][5].
3. Legal and advocacy framing: context, consequences, and competing narratives
Pretti’s family attorney, Steve Schleicher, stressed that the Jan. 13 encounter does not justify the Jan. 24 shooting and framed the earlier scuffle as evidence of prior aggressive tactics by agents rather than provocation warranting lethal force [5][2]. Conversely, conservative outlets and political figures have seized on the video to question Pretti’s conduct before his death, with social posts and commentary amplifying the clip’s most inflammatory moments [9]. News organizations reported both the video evidence and these competing interpretations, noting the family’s assertion that Pretti sustained injuries in the Jan. 13 encounter and did not receive medical care [2][4].
4. What the videos do not prove and remaining open questions
The footage establishes that Pretti kicked and damaged a federal agents’ SUV taillight on Jan. 13 — that fact is documented in multiple verified clips and mainstream reports [1][2][3] — but the videos do not show whether any of the same individual agents were present at the later fatal shooting, nor do they show whether agents on Jan. 13 saw a weapon on Pretti before the later incident; outlets explicitly note those limits in the record [4][5]. Homeland Security Investigations’ review was reported, but public conclusions about discipline, charges or linkage between the two events were not available in the reporting reviewed [4][5].
5. Journalistic posture and why the nuance matters
The incident on Jan. 13 is now part of the public record: verified videos show Alex Pretti breaking a federal SUV’s taillight during an altercation with federal immigration officers [1][2]. That factual baseline has been used both to contextualize the later shooting as part of a fraught pattern of enforcement in Minneapolis and to cast the victim in a more culpable light; both narratives rely on the same clip but draw different conclusions, and reporting to date documents the clip while acknowledging its evidentiary limits about causation and continuity of personnel between encounters [4][9].