Did someone yell gun gun gun
Executive summary
Multiple videos and major news outlets record someone shouting variations of “gun” during the Minneapolis encounter that ended with federal agents shooting Alex Pretti, and those shouts occur seconds before or around the time shots were fired, but eyewitness accounts and subsequent video analysis leave clear ambiguity about who shouted, what they were referencing, and whether the shout preceded or followed an agent’s visible drawing of a weapon [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. What the videos plainly show about a shouted “gun”
Several outlets that reviewed body and bystander video report an audible shout of “gun” or “gun, gun” during the scuffle, with one reconstruction noting an officer backs away with an object that appears to be a gun and someone shouts “gun” just before the first shot is fired [2] [3]; The New York Times timeline specifically places agents yelling that he has a gun about eight seconds after Pretti is pinned, suggesting the shout was contemporaneous with — and perhaps after — the struggle on the ground [1].
2. Who might have shouted — and why that matters
The recordings do not definitively identify the speaker, and reporting flags that ambiguity: OPB notes it is “not clear if that’s a reference to the weapon authorities say Pretti had,” and video frames show an officer with what appears to be a gun in hand just before shots, which could mean the shout referenced an officer’s visible weapon rather than an accusation that Pretti was brandishing one [2] [3]. Witnesses who watched from nearby windows told CBS News they did not see Pretti holding or brandishing a firearm before he was thrown to the ground, underlining that audible shouts alone cannot settle who was armed or who shouted [4].
3. Timing vs. legal and tactical standards
Former FBI agent Rob D’Amico, quoted in reporting, emphasized that simply hearing the word “gun” does not legally or tactically authorize lethal force absent visual confirmation that the weapon is being readied for use; D’Amico and other law-enforcement veterans told MS NOW they often encounter shouted warnings where a dropped or on-body weapon prompted caution, not immediate shooting [3]. This principle matters because the New York Times and other visuals suggest the agents may not have known about a weapon until seconds after Pretti was pinned, which complicates claims that officers fired in response to an imminent threat that was clearly observable beforehand [1] [3].
4. Official claims, recovered evidence, and post-shooting behavior
DHS’s initial statement said the episode began after Pretti “approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun,” language that did not specify whether the gun was in his hands or on his person, and video reviewers report agents searching the body after the shooting and asking “Where’s the gun?”—behavior some law-enforcement observers say is inconsistent with an officer having seen Pretti brandish a weapon seconds earlier [1] [3]. Authorities later recovered a firearm that they say belonged to Pretti, but the footage and witness statements feed two competing narratives about whether the shout of “gun” indicated a clear, immediate threat [1] [4].
5. Conclusion and the remaining evidentiary gaps
Answering the narrow factual question: videos and contemporaneous reporting show that someone did yell “gun” during the incident [2] [3] [1], but the available footage and witness accounts do not incontrovertibly identify the speaker, the intended referent of the shout, or whether that shout preceded or followed a visual confirmation of a weapon in a way that would justify the use of lethal force; those are the unresolved facts that prosecutors, independent investigators, and the video record must still clarify [1] [4] [3].