In the days since 37-year-old ICU nurse and veteran Alex Pretti was killed at an anti-ICE protest, officials have pushed a story of a dangerous man “attacking” officers with a gun. But frame by frame, the publicly available footage reveals a quieter, more unsettling sequence: a man holding a phone, overwhelmed by agents, pepper-sprayed, and finally disarmed as he falls to his knees. According to Dr. G, a clinical and forensic psychologist, the agent in the gray jacket clearly removes the firearm from Pretti’s waistband, turns away, and runs as other ICE agents open fire on the now-unarmed nurse.

That detail, he argues, undercuts any claim that officers were responding to an immediate, visible threat. If the man believed Pretti still posed lethal danger, why turn your back and flee instead of taking cover or warning colleagues that the weapon was secured? His analysis doesn’t answer every question, but it deepens the most haunting one: whether a “chaotic” operation escalated into a preventable killing. In Minneapolis, already raw from previous ICE-involved deaths, calls for an independent, transparent investigation are no longer just demands for accountability—they are a plea to ensure Alex Pretti’s final moments are seen clearly, not buried beneath a narrative that the video itself appears to contradict.