What did Bellingcat and Index's technical reconstructions specifically show about the shooter’s position and the vehicle’s path?

1. What Bellingcat reconstructed about the shooter’s position

Bellingcat synchronized multiple bystander videos and tracked the federal agents’ movement frame-by-frame, showing the agent identified as Ross moving around the street and, in updated footage, placed the shooter closer to a white SUV immediately before the shooting occurred; they also examined Callenson’s clip frame-by-frame to show the gun and phone positions in the agent’s hands as context for his posture and orientation at the moment of firing ^{[1] [2]}. Bellingcat’s animated map — updated after additional CNN-published footage — explicitly moves the dot representing the shooter nearer to the white SUV prior to shots being fired, underscoring their conclusion that the agent was not standing fixed in a single spot but actively moving relative to the vehicle ^[1].

2. What Bellingcat reconstructed about the vehicle’s path

Using the same synchronized videos, Bellingcat traced Good’s vehicle trajectory: it can be seen backing up, then veering to the right as the agent and camera move left; another downstream camera angle shows the same vehicle pass in close proximity to the agent at roughly the time of the discharge ^[1]. Bellingcat notes technical limits of the clips — one cellphone angle points up and away while the car moves forward, making it unclear from that shot exactly how close the car came to the agent — but a separate down-the-street angle appears to show the vehicle pass very near the agent while he fires ^[1].

3. How Bellingcat qualified certainty and the limits of the evidence

Bellingcat explicitly qualified its findings where the footage is ambiguous: while trajectories and relative positioning were mapped, the group conceded that certain angles do not allow precise distance measurement and that the cellphone perspectives sometimes point away from the best vantage to judge proximity, meaning their reconstruction shows relative motion and likely closeness but not a mathematically precise standoff distance ^[1]. Nieman Lab’s coverage underscores that Bellingcat used frame-by-frame visual forensics to challenge simpler narratives about self‑defense claims, but that investigators across newsrooms relied on multiple clips and differing forensic judgments — signalling both the value and the interpretive limits of open-source reconstructions ^[2].

4. What the public reporting does not show about Index’s findings

The set of provided sources contains multiple Bellingcat items and discussion of its methods but does not include or summarize a technical reconstruction by Index; therefore, any claim about “what Index showed” cannot be substantiated from the material available here and must be treated as absent from this report ^[1]. Without Index’s published reconstruction or a reliable secondary summary in the provided reporting, it is impossible to catalogue points of agreement or divergence between Bellingcat and Index based on the current sources ^[1].

5. Alternative interpretations, motives, and why the nuance matters

Some observers and commentators have interpreted certain angles as showing the car striking or narrowly missing the agent, and those readings have fed rapid political narratives; Bellingcat’s careful synchronization and maps push back on simplistic readings by showing movement and apparent proximity while also flagging ambiguity about exact distances — a pattern consistent with Bellingcat’s forensic approach and echoed by other newsrooms conducting visual forensics ^{[1] [2]}. Readers should note that OSINT groups like Bellingcat have an implicit mission to challenge official statements and clarify events using open footage, which can produce forceful reconstructions that still carry technical caveats; this analysis is limited to the evidence and reporting provided and cannot adjudicate factual claims beyond those sources ^{[1] [2]}.