Who is the guy in the gray coat in the ICE shooting today
Executive summary
The man widely shown in video wearing a gray coat at the scene of Saturday’s federal operation in Minneapolis has been identified by multiple outlets as 37-year-old Alex Pretti, a U.S. citizen and I.C.U. nurse; city officials say he was fatally shot by federal Border Patrol agents during an attempted detention [1] [2]. Federal officials contest aspects of those accounts, saying the person approached agents with a handgun and was shot after “reacting violently,” while video reviewed by news organizations has fueled disputes over whether he was armed [3] [1].
1. Who do reporters and officials say he is — the identification
Local and national reporting names the man shot by federal agents as Alex Pretti, 37, and Minneapolis officials have confirmed that identification to reporters, while outlets such as MPR and Reuters published images of a makeshift memorial at the scene and named Pretti as the victim [2] [4]. The New York Times reports that Pretti worked as an intensive care nurse, was a U.S. citizen and had no criminal record, details cited as part of its video analysis that contradicts some federal claims [1].
2. What is disputed — weapons and what he was holding
The Department of Homeland Security and Border Patrol officials have publicly stated that the person who was shot approached agents with a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun and that an officer fired “defensive shots” while attempting to disarm him; DHS showed an image of a gun it said was recovered [3] [5]. But videos analyzed and reported by The New York Times and other outlets appear to show the man holding a phone, not a firearm, and those analyses are cited by city officials and protestors as contradicting the federal account [1] [6]. The mismatch between federal explanations and independently reviewed footage is at the heart of the controversy [3] [1].
3. The immediate context — federal operations and local outrage
The shooting occurred amid heightened tensions after a prior federal fatal shooting in Minneapolis earlier this month and during a period when federal immigration operations have been vigorously expanded and contested; that context has driven large protests and official rebukes of the federal response [6] [7]. Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis leaders have criticized the federal narrative and said state investigators were initially denied access to the scene, intensifying calls for an independent review [2].
4. Conflicting narratives and their political uses
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and federal spokespeople framed the incident as an officer-involved shooting justified by an armed suspect, language that has been used to defend aggressive enforcement and to criticize local officials, while civil liberties groups and local authorities frame it as evidence of reckless federal escalation that has led to civilian deaths [3] [7]. Both narratives carry political stakes: federal officials use the account to justify agents’ actions and operations, while critics use video and local testimony to demand oversight and policy changes [3] [7].
5. What the available reporting cannot confirm about the gray coat detail
None of the sources in the record explicitly tie the descriptor “the guy in the gray coat” to unique identifying details beyond the broader identification of the victim as Alex Pretti; reporting repeatedly names Pretti as the person shot and focuses on whether he held a phone or a gun, but it does not document a specific attribution of the gray coat as a distinctive identifier separate from video images [1] [2]. Therefore, while the person seen in many widely shared clips wearing a gray coat appears to be Pretti, the available reporting does not add independent detail about the coat itself beyond the visual evidence used to identify him [1] [2].
6. Conclusion — the most supported answer and outstanding questions
Based on multiple independent news reports and city statements, the most supported identification of the man in the widely circulated footage — the person in the gray coat — is Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse who was shot and killed by federal agents; however, crucial facts remain contested, especially whether he was armed, with federal officials saying a handgun was recovered and video analysts and local officials saying footage shows a phone rather than a weapon [1] [3] [2]. Absent a single uncontested, fully transparent release of footage and forensic detail by investigators, that core disagreement will likely shape legal and political fallout [1] [4].