Misfire of victim’s gun could have triggered fatal ICE shooting
Monday, 26 January 2026
The headline on this story has been updated to remove the word ‘misfire’ and better reflect the question of a ‘negligent’ shooting.
The fatal shooting of a nurse by ICE agents may have been prompted by one of the officers “negligently” firing the victim’s gun, it has emerged.
Video footage shows Alex Pretti’s gun being taken from him by a border agent as he lies on the ground while being beaten by other officers.
As the agent runs away with Pretti’s 9mm pistol in his right hand, a gunshot can be heard in the footage posted online.
That, in turn, may have “spooked” the other Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at the scene into firing a number of rounds at Pretti, 37, as he lay unarmed and defenceless on the ground.
The series of events raises serious questions about the training and discipline of the 3000 federal agents who have been drafted into Minnesota by the Trump administration to round up illegal immigrants in the state.
Minneapolis police have already been blocked from the investigation into Pretti’s death and senior figures within the administration have labelled the intensive care nurse a “terrorist”, claiming that the federal agents who shot him were the actual victims.
Amid growing alarm that any inquiry by the FBI and Justice Department would vindicate the ICE agents and place blame on Pretti for him causing his own death, analysis of the video footage has cast doubt on the White House’s version of events.
Opponents say the footage shows Pretti, who was by then disarmed, being “executed” in the street.
Brian O’Hara, the police chief in Minneapolis, said on Sunday that the 37-year-old was lawfully entitled to have a handgun under the state’s concealed carry laws.
Rob Doar, a lawyer and the president of the Minnesota Gun Owners Law Centre, said he believed that the initial shot was fired by the agent who had seized Pretti’s gun.
“After analysing the videos, I believe it’s highly likely the first shot was a negligent discharge from the agent in the grey jacket after he removed the Sig P320 from Pretti’s holster while exiting the scene,” Doar said.
The initial shot triggered a number of rounds fired at Pretti, even though he was unarmed at the time.
A 2025 study showed that police officers were 11 times more likely to fire their weapons if they had already heard gunfire as part of a phenomenon called “contagious fire”.
Critics will argue that the number of shots fired at Pretti suggests that ICE agents deployed in Minneapolis were not trained to tackle crowd control in city environments.
Tim Walz, the state governor, has demanded that Donald Trump withdraw the “3,000 untrained agents” from Minnesota “before they kill another American in the street”.
In a telephone interview with The Wall Street Journal on Sunday night, Trump avoided questions about whether the officer who shot Pretti had done the “right thing”.
“We’re looking, we’re reviewing everything and will come out with a determination,” the US president said.
He also signalled the potential withdrawal of ICE agents from Minneapolis, but did not offer a time frame for their departure.
“At some point we will leave. We’ve done, they’ve done a phenomenal job,” he said.
Pretti’s death followed the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a mother of three, by an ICE agent just over two weeks ago.
The Sig Sauer 9mm pistol legally owned by Pretti has come under scrutiny in recent years over reports of an alleged defect that has allowed it to be fired “uncommanded”.
More than 100 lawsuits have been lodged against the manufacturers over claims of unintentional discharges.
According to reports, ICE banned its agents from using the weapon last summer, with the agency issuing an order to replace the Sig pistol with another made by Glock.
Sig Sauer denied any problems with the popular handgun. In a statement, the company accused “uninformed, agenda-driven parties” of launching “attacks against Sig Sauer’s most tested, most reliable, and most durable product – the P320 pistol”.
It added: “This misinformation causes confusion and uncertainty among our valued customers.” The P320 cannot “under any circumstances discharge without a trigger pull”, it said.
Pressure is mounting on the Trump administration to investigate Pretti’s death properly amid fears it will be covered up.
Barack Obama, the former US president, said on Sunday that ICE and border patrol agents were “acting with impunity and engaging in tactics that seem designed to intimidate, harass, provoke and endanger the residents of a major American city”.
He accused Trump of being “eager to escalate the situation” rather than “impose some semblance of discipline and accountability over the agents they’ve deployed”.