Alex Pretti: What Made Him Carry a Loaded Gun to a Street Demonstration?

 

Alex Pretti is the man shot in Minneapolis demonstration against ICE agents. First of all, I’m sorry for his family.  

Judging from the videos, the fatality has all the marks of a ‘bad shooting,’ i.e., a mistake on the part of an ICE agent. Available video seems to support the conclusion of a fatal mistake.

 I’m going to go with that, a mistake.  But there is much that will never be discussed.  How and why exactly did Pretti come to bring a gun and ammo to a demonstration where he’d already been involved in a tense standoff between ICE agents and the demonstrators?  

People don’t like the question, I know. They’re quite suddenly  devout Second Amendment acolytes.  So am I.  Alex Pretti had a right to carry an absolute right to have a loaded  pistol and two clips (?) filled with 9mm ammo and also a right to protest.   

But I’m curious:  Alex Pretti got out of bed that morning, got dressed, and then decided he would carry his pistol and ammo to the demonstrations in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Did he do that every day? Did he carry when he went to the grocery store, to church, to his job at the VA hospital?

How did he carry his pistol and ammo?  Was it in a holster, stuck into his belt, or did it fit in his pocket?  And when he decided to carry his loaded pistol to the demonstration, did he think about what might happen? 

Was he thinking he would shoot it out with ICE agent(s)in a gun battle if he felt threatened? Or would he say “No, I would never do that” thereby leaving you to believe the weapon was for ornamentation only, a fashion accessory, deadly jewelry, so to speak.

No one really knows what was on his mind when he brought a gun to a volatile situation but lethal weapons are not fashion accessories.  Nor can you say he was naïve about the clashes between ICE agents and demonstrators.      

 He’d fought with ICE agents before, according to CNN reporters Jeff Winter and Priscilla Alvarez.  Their story was based on anonymous sources close to Pretti.

To paraphrase the CNN report: . .  ‘he  (Pretti) stopped his car after observing ICE agents chasing. .  .a family on foot, and began shouting an blowing his whistle,” accord to the unidentified source.

And more: “Pretti later told the source that five agents tackled him and one leaned on his back – an encounter that left him with a broken rib. The agents quickly released him at the scene. . . .  Pretti was later given medication consistent with treating a broken rib, according to records reviewed by CNN.”

There’s a hearsay addendum to the article in which the unidentified third party ‘source’ says: “That day, he thought he was going to die.”

It sounds a bit dramatic, since the CNN story goes on to say he was immediately released.

UPDATE:  Interestingly, David Muir on the ABC nightly news this evening (Jan 28) played a video clip in which Pretti is shown spitting at and kicking the taillight out of a presumably ICE SUV.  The same clip shows a pistol tucked into his belt at his back, identified as such by the network news. 

To be clear, this was not on the day Pretti was killed, but several days before.