The Alex Pretti investigation returned to public view on Tuesday 27 October 2026, when the parents of the 37-year-old intensive care nurse killed by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis held their first news conference since his death and accused the United States Department of Justice of withholding evidence and information for 275 days. Michael and Susan Pretti said they would no longer stay silent about the investigation into their son's death on 24 January 2026, and they called on federal officials to share the full case file with Minnesota investigators. The story is trending per news coverage, with Reuters and CNN reporting the family's remarks within hours of the news conference in Minneapolis.
At the centre of the dispute is a simple question that has now been open for more than nine months: who will decide what happened to Alex Pretti, and on the basis of what evidence? The family says the federal government has given them almost nothing. The Justice Department says family communications normally come at a later stage of a case. Minnesota investigators, meanwhile, say they are still being denied key items of physical and recorded evidence, and are fighting the department in court for access. This article explains who Alex Pretti was, what the video evidence reviewed by major news organisations shows, what his parents said on Tuesday, what the Justice Department replied, and what happens next.
Who was Alex Pretti, and what happened on 24 January 2026?
Alex Jeffrey Pretti was a 37-year-old intensive care nurse who worked for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs in Minneapolis. On 24 January 2026 he was in the city's Eat Street district, on Nicollet Avenue, during protests against Operation Metro Surge, the federal immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota. The protests had intensified after another United States citizen, Renée Good, was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis on 7 January 2026.
According to bystander video verified and reviewed by Reuters, the BBC, The Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, The New York Times, CNN and The Guardian, Pretti was filming law enforcement agents with his phone and directing traffic. At one point he stepped between an agent and a woman whom the agent had pushed to the ground, putting his arm around her. He was then pepper-sprayed and wrestled to the ground by several federal agents, with around six surrounding him when he was shot and killed by two United States Customs and Border Protection officers.
The same reviews of the video concluded that Pretti was holding a mobile phone, not a gun, in the moments before he was tackled and pinned to the ground. They also appear to show an agent removing a gun from Pretti's holster and moving away roughly one second before another agent fired, with a voice heard saying "gun, gun" just before the first shot. Pretti was legally licensed to carry a handgun. The reviews concluded that two agents shot at him at least ten times within about five seconds, continuing after he lay motionless. As with the Renée Good case, state investigators were initially denied access to the shooting scene by the federal government, according to reporting on the case.
The Department of Homeland Security gave a different initial account on the day of the shooting, posting that agents were conducting a targeted operation when an individual approached Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun, and that after officers tried to disarm him an agent fired defensive shots. That account was disputed by the video evidence as analysed by the news organisations listed above, and the family's lawyers and supporters have pointed to the gap between the official description and the footage ever since. No criminal charges have been filed in connection with the fatal shootings of Pretti or Good, according to reporting in October 2026. The case sits within a wider set of disputes over federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota, including the separate case of a man deported to Ghana and then sent to Mali, which is covered in the Moussa Diawara ICE case explained.
The Alex Pretti investigation update: 5 things his parents said
First, this was the family's first public appearance. Michael and Susan Pretti had not held a news conference since their son's death. Michael Pretti said at the news conference in Minneapolis: "We will no longer stay silent about the actions of the Department of Justice in the 275 days since Alex's murder." The family used the word murder for the killing; the Justice Department has not characterised the shooting in those terms, and no agent has been charged. The distinction matters, because the family's language describes how they see the case, while the legal question of whether any crime was committed remains for investigators and prosecutors.
Second, the parents said they learned of their son's death from television and heard nothing directly from the federal government afterwards. "Imagine that your child was killed because of the actions of the government, federal government. Imagine learning that your child had been murdered by watching it on TV. No one from the government called you, called us that day. They didn't call us the next day, nor the next, nor the next 275 days. We have not heard anything from the federal government," Michael Pretti said, according to reporting of the news conference. Susan Pretti said the family wanted the world to understand who her son really was, and to clear his name.
Third, the family pointed to a July letter from their attorney, Steven L. Schleicher, to Attorney General Todd Blanche, which CNN said it had obtained exclusively. In the letter, Schleicher wrote that the Prettis had received no substantive updates from the Justice Department about the investigation into their son's death, and called the department's attitude toward the case "cruel". The letter argued that the government's pattern of conduct was "not only unconscionable, but unlawful", and that the refusal to communicate with the family violated the federal Crime Victims' Rights Act. "It is impossible to convey how the government's refusal to engage in transparent communication with the Pretti family has compounded their heartbreak," the letter said.
Fourth, the parents described a meeting on 13 July 2026 with Dan Rosen, the United States Attorney for the District of Minnesota. That was the same day Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced in a news conference that federal officials had handed over volumes of evidence from Pretti's shooting, including hard drives of previously withheld material and hours of body-camera video. According to the family's letter, Rosen refused to provide any information at the meeting and would not even confirm the evidence-sharing arrangement. The letter quoted Rosen as saying only that "I can't tell you for all kinds of reasons", without providing a single reason, according to CNN's account of the letter.
Fifth, the family set out concrete demands. They want federal officials to identify the agents who fired their guns, confirm whether the FBI investigation into the shooting remains active, and return property that they say is no longer needed as evidence. Above all, they want the entire federal case file turned over to state investigators. "Look in your heart and do what is right. Share the evidence now so prosecutors can follow the facts and hold these men accountable," Michael Pretti said, addressing the agents who shot his son and the officials responsible for the investigation. He added: "Do your job and stop shielding Alex's killers." Susan Pretti said: "The federal government went on TV and lied about Alex. They tried to slander his memory to cover up their crime. Not only was it wrong, it was shameful, unfair, unacceptable. We want to clear our son's name. We want the world to understand who Alex really was. We want our son's killers brought to justice once and for all."
What the Justice Department said in reply
The Justice Department responded to Reuters with a general statement about the timing of contact with victims' families, rather than addressing the specific claims in the family's letter. "Communications with family members, if any, come at a later stage of a case, such as indictment, initial appearance, plea, trial, or sentencing. Those communications do not typically occur during an investigation," the department said in its statement to Reuters. The department did not, in the reporting available on Tuesday, confirm or deny the existence or status of the FBI investigation, identify the agents involved, or say when any evidence would be shared.
That position is consistent with how federal investigators often describe active investigations, in which officials decline to discuss evidence or charging decisions while inquiries continue. It does not, on its own, answer the family's central complaint, which is that nine months have passed without the information they say the law entitles them to receive, and without the evidence-sharing that Minnesota prosecutors say they need. The Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions from FOX 9 about the pause in evidence sharing or when sharing might resume, according to FOX 9's reporting in October. Readers should treat the department's statement as its position on process, not as a finding about what happened on 24 January, which remains under investigation.
The Alex Pretti investigation and the evidence fight in Minnesota
Behind the family's news conference is a longer and more complicated evidence-sharing dispute in the Alex Pretti investigation, which has swung back and forth several times. In June 2026, after negotiations through lawyers, the federal government agreed to share information and collaborate on the shooting investigations, according to a sworn statement by Drew Evans, superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA). On 13 July, Moriarty and Evans announced that the state had obtained hard drives of previously withheld evidence. "Through the cooperation of our federal partners, we have obtained the hard drives of previously withheld evidence," Moriarty said at the time. "I'm told we have the body cam evidence. But this is voluminous. This is hours and hours and hours of video. And so we are in the process of going through that."
Over the summer, federal authorities turned over Renée Good's vehicle, the gun of the agent who shot Good, and body-camera video from the shootings, according to court documents reported by FOX 9. The state was also sharing evidence it had collected from other sources with federal investigators. Then, according to the BCA, cooperation stopped again. Federal investigators abruptly stopped sharing evidence last month with state authorities investigating the fatal shootings of Good and Pretti, CNN reported on 15 October, citing court filings and Minnesota officials. The move was described as the latest in a series of reversals in which federal authorities cooperated with state and local investigators before suddenly changing course days or even hours later.
Minnesota investigators said in court filings that the Justice Department still had not turned over key evidence, including a statement by one of the officers who shot Pretti, which they described as crucial as the Hennepin County attorney investigates the killing. According to Evans's sworn statement, state investigators were also blocked from accessing the cellphone of the agent who fatally shot Good, her clothing, the firearms used to shoot Pretti, the gun Pretti possessed, and other physical evidence from the scene of Pretti's shooting, such as projectiles and shell casings. The BCA said federal authorities were still withholding the gun used to shoot Pretti, the agents' cellphones and the agents' recorded statements. Moriarty's office said it had no updates on potential charges for the federal agents involved in the shootings of Good and Pretti.
Moriarty wrote in the court record that Rosen attributed the current pause in information sharing to "challenges with D.C.", according to FOX 9. State prosecutors have again asked a judge to order federal agencies to hand over the evidence, arguing that federal lawyers had identified no legal authority or rational basis for obstructing state criminal investigations. In a reply filed in October, attorneys for the Justice Department argued that it was within the department's discretion to decline to share information with state authorities, citing the department's Touhy regulations for responding to record requests, which they said applied only when formal legal proceedings were under way, and that there was no active court case when Minnesota made its requests. Minnesota investigators are also battling the Justice Department in federal court in Washington, D.C., for access to the evidence, according to CNN.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who is leading a lawsuit against the Justice Department over access to evidence, told CNN on Tuesday that his office was working on the case every day. "We are working on this case every single day. My office is working in a collaborative way with the local county attorney. We're working together to make sure that the truth and justice prevails in Alex Pretti's case," Ellison said. The dispute over evidence is unfolding while the Justice Department faces other high-profile scrutiny, including the third criminal case brought against a former FBI director, covered in the James Comey espionage case, and a separate election-related announcement by the president, covered in the $1 million voter fraud reward explained. None of those cases decides the Pretti investigation, but together they help explain why the family's complaint about transparency has drawn national attention.
What happens next in the Alex Pretti investigation
Three tracks will now run in parallel. The first is the family's public campaign. Having broken their silence, Michael and Susan Pretti have said they will keep pressing for the case file, the identities of the agents, confirmation of the FBI investigation's status, and the return of property. Their appearance on CNN's The Lead on Tuesday evening, announced in CNN's programming note, suggests they intend to keep the case in public view rather than return to private correspondence with the department.
The second track is the court fight over evidence. Minnesota prosecutors are asking a judge to order the handover of the remaining material, while Justice Department lawyers argue that sharing is discretionary. Until that dispute is resolved, the Hennepin County attorney's investigation will proceed on the evidence it already holds, including the body-camera video obtained in July, plus whatever the BCA has gathered independently. The third track is the Alex Pretti investigation itself, whose status the family says has not been confirmed to them. If the department brings charges, declines to do so, or issues findings, those steps would normally be announced publicly, but no timetable has been given in the reporting available on Tuesday.
For readers following the case, the most useful discipline is to separate three questions that are often run together. The first is what the video shows, which several major news organisations have independently reviewed and described in consistent terms. The second is what the law requires the Justice Department to share, and when, which is now being argued in court. The third is whether any individual agent committed a crime, which no court has decided and on which no charges have been filed. The parents' news conference answers the first part of the family's story in their own words, and sharpens the second question. It does not, by itself, decide the third. What it does change is the public record: after 275 days in which the family says they heard nothing from the federal government, their account, their letter, and their demands are now on the record, and the department's explanation for the silence will be tested against them in the weeks ahead.
Sources: Reuters; CNN; FOX 9; court filings and sworn statements from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension as reported by CNN and FOX 9; video analysis by Reuters, the BBC, The Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, The New York Times, CNN and The Guardian as reported.