What do the full, unedited videos of the Minneapolis incident show about when and how the handgun first appears?
Executive summary
Full, unedited bystander and surveillance videos collected and analyzed by multiple news organizations show Alex Pretti moving toward and being wrestled to the ground by federal agents, with one or more agents emerging from the struggle visibly holding a handgun immediately before agents fired; those same videos do not show Pretti holding a gun in his hands as he approaches and, in many clips, show him holding a phone [1] [2] [3] [4]. Federal officials have released a photo of a 9mm they say belonged to Pretti and have maintained he was armed, but the raw video record available to reporters leaves open key questions about when the firearm left Pretti’s person and who had control of it in the split seconds before the shots [5] [6] [7].
1. What the bystander footage consistently shows in the moments before the shooting
Multiple independent bystander angles capture Pretti walking and recording the enforcement action on his phone, being shoved by an agent, then later being pepper‑sprayed and grabbed from behind by several agents before being pulled to the pavement; in those clips both of Pretti’s hands are visible and appear to hold a phone, not a firearm, as he moves toward others at the scene [8] [2] [3] [4].
2. How the handgun first appears in the visual record according to news analyses
Video analyses published by the Washington Post and other outlets report that during the close, chaotic grapple on the ground an agent can be seen holding a handgun that appears to have been removed from Pretti’s waistband area; the Post’s frame‑by‑frame review concludes an agent emerged from the scrum with the firearm, and then less than a second later the first shots were fired [1].
3. The official claim and the evidence the government released
The Department of Homeland Security has said Pretti approached agents with a 9mm and shared a photograph of a handgun it said was involved; administration officials and spokespeople described the incident as an “armed struggle,” a narrative repeated by some federal briefings and by President Trump [5] [6]. DHS’s photograph and public statements do not by themselves timestamp exactly when the weapon was separated from Pretti, which is why video timing matters [5].
4. Points of agreement and key contradictions between video and the official account
Reporters and forensic reviewers largely agree on the same contiguous sequence—approach, shove, grapple, agent holding a gun, shots fired—but they disagree about agency and timing: newsroom analyses emphasize that Pretti is not seen with a gun in hand as he approaches and that the gun appears in an agent’s grasp in the final, rapid seconds before firing, a fact that undercuts the DHS framing that he was actively brandishing a weapon at the outset of the encounter [1] [2] [3] [4].
5. Forensic limits, unedited footage access, and outstanding questions
Public reporting cites multiple bystander and surveillance clips verified by outlets but does not make every unedited camera file available to the public; because journalists are working from those collected clips rather than an exhaustive official release, the video evidence in the public domain strongly suggests the gun was controlled by an agent in the immediate fraction of a second before shots were fired, yet cannot—on the publicly released clips alone—definitively prove the complete chain of custody of the firearm milliseconds earlier or the precise moment it left Pretti’s waistband [1] [7] [2].
6. Why the precise timing matters and how interpretations diverge
Timing decides legal and narrative differences: if Pretti was actively pointing or holding the gun when agents opened fire, that supports the DHS claim of an imminent threat; if agents had already secured the gun or disarmed him just before shooting, that would undercut the government’s description of an ongoing armed assault—newsroom video analyses show the handgun in an agent’s hand immediately prior to the shots but also show Pretti with a phone earlier, leaving both factual elements in tension pending the full evidentiary record [1] [2] [3] [7].