On Saturday morning, at 10:58 a.m., my friend Jackie in Minneapolis texted me a video headlined “Another ICE murder in front of Glam Doll Donuts.” A local citizen had filmed and posted it on the social media platform Reddit.
Jackie followed up with a number of individual texts:
“don’t watch if this will upset you”
“they just executed someone”
“that is 2 blocks from Than’s waldorf school”
“happened about an hour ago”
“crowds are gathering”
“the civil war could start right here”
Almost two hours after my friend sounded the alarm, I got the first breaking-news alert from the Boston Globe, which linked to an Associated Press report on the fatal encounter between a protester and federal agents — the second this month in the Twin Cities. The AP found another eyewitness video that showed more angles of the incident, which involved an agent from the U.S. Border Patrol, not Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Over the next 48 hours came a barrage of stories, updates, follow-ups and statements. Perhaps most extraordinary among them was the official response of the administration of President Donald Trump. Instead of promising an investigation using neutral language to lower the temperature — as law enforcement agencies routinely do after an officer shoots someone — the White House amped up the rhetoric, defaming the victim as a gun-toting domestic terrorist whose goal was to “massacre” federal agents.
The videos tell a different story, of a man coming to the aid of another protester who had been pushed to the ground. Shortly after Alex Pretti, 37, was killed, his parents weighed in, calling out the administration’s “sickening lies” about their son. Using the video footage for reference, they insisted that Alex was not holding a gun but a phone in his right hand. They noted that his empty left hand was raised above his head and he was trying to protect a woman on the ground, “all while being pepper sprayed.”
“Please get the truth out about our son,” they said. “He was a good man.”
The truth is a hard thing to find in the hours immediately after an event like this. I turned to a variety of sources, including a new one for me: Heather Cox Richardson, a Boston College history professor with a Substack newsletter, Letters From an American, about “the history behind today’s politics.” I tuned in to her 36-minute video on “The Killing of Alex Pretti: What we know so far.” Seated before a nautical chart of the Maine coastline, with frameless specs and her hair pulled back tight, the historian carefully shared only the facts she had been able to confirm.
I found her sober lecture to be oddly comforting.
In this case, the real heroes aren’t journalists; they’re bystanders with phones.
Like it or not, this is how national news breaks and spreads in today’s chaotic and dangerous world. In this case, the real heroes aren’t journalists; they’re bystanders with phones. Those amateur videos — primary-source documents — have as much power to check the president as the Wall Street Journal. Its Sunday editorial online called for Trump to “pause” ICE action in Minneapolis, noting that “Americans don’t want law enforcement shooting people in the street or arresting five-year-old boys.”
By Sunday night, the Journal was promoting an exclusive interview with Trump in which he said his administration was “reviewing everything” about the shooting.
Meanwhile, “people are enraged, stressed, heartbroken — but maintaining their commitments to neighbors and to vulnerable people here,” according to another friend in Minneapolis, Philip Bither, who left Vermont, and a top job at the Flynn, in 1997 to join the Walker Art Center. He and his wife marched in the citywide strike the day before the shooting. “We know these intersections, blocks and neighborhoods well — shocking to see them on international news sites.”
My friend Jackie was more direct: “If this doesn’t change something, we are doomed.”
Journalists can’t be everywhere, all the time, but even if we miss the action in real time, we can help make sense of it. Trustworthy, fact-checked reporting is more important than ever.
On Sunday morning, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott put out a statement condemning the federal immigration operations in Minneapolis. The Republican expressed uncharacteristic outrage, saying, “Enough … it’s not acceptable for American citizens to be killed by federal agents for exercising their God-given and constitutional rights to protest their government.”
Seven Days deputy news editor Sasha Goldstein interrupted his weekend to write a breaking story about the gov’s reaction, and reporter Kevin McCallum added photos and quotes from a protest in Waterbury. News editor Matthew Roy edited and published the post.
Have no doubt: If anything like what’s happening in Minneapolis should go down here, Seven Days will be on the ground, covering it.
This article appears in January 28 • 2026.
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