A new video filmed by the US immigration agent who fatally shot activist Renee Good in Minneapolis has emerged ahead of planned nationwide protests across the United States over the shooting.
The new, 47-second video shows the shooting from the perspective of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officer Jonathan Ross, who fired the shots.
It was published online by a Minnesota-based conservative news site, Alpha News and later reposted on social media by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
With sirens blaring in the background, Mr Ross approaches and circles Ms Good’s vehicle in the middle of the road while apparently filming on his mobile phone.
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At the same time, Ms Good’s wife also was recording the encounter and can be seen walking around the vehicle and approaching the officer.
“That’s fine, I’m not mad at you,” Ms Good says as the officer passes by her door. She has one hand on the steering wheel and the other outside the open driver side window.
“US citizen, former f***ing veteran,” says her wife, standing outside the passenger side of the SUV holding up her phone.
“You wanna come at us, you wanna come at us, I say go get yourself some lunch, big boy.”
Other officers are approaching the driver’s side of the car at about the same time and one says: “Get out of the car, get out of the f***ing car.”
Mr Ross is now at the front driver side of the vehicle. Ms Good reverses briefly, then turns the steering wheel toward the passenger side as she drives ahead and Ross opens fire.
Warning: The video below contains footage that some people may find upsetting
The camera becomes unsteady and points toward the sky and then returns to the street view showing Ms Good’s SUV careening away.
“F***ing b****,” someone at the scene says.
A crashing sound is heard as Ms Good’s vehicle smashes into others parked on the street.
Protest organisers said more than 1,000 weekend events were planned across the country demanding an end to large-scale deployments of Ice agents ordered by president Donald Trump, mostly to cities led by Democratic politicians.
The rallies were being organised by a coalition of groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, MoveOn Civic Action, Voto Latino, and Indivisible, some of which were at the forefront of “No Kings” protests against Trump last year.
Minnesota state authorities have announced they are opening their own investigation into the killing.
The state became a major flashpoint of the Republican president’s militarised deportation round-ups on Wednesday, after the Ice officer shot and killed Ms Good (37), a mother of three, behind the wheel of her car on a residential street.
The violence came soon after some 2,000 federal officers were dispatched to Minneapolis in what Ice’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, called the “largest DHS operation ever”.
Minnesota governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, condemned the deployment as a “reckless” example of “governance by reality TV”.
At the time, Ms Good was participating in one of numerous “neighbourhood patrols” that track, monitor and record Ice activities, according to family and local activists.
Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem and other Trump administration officials said Ms Good was “impeding” and “stalking” Ice agents all day, and that the officer opened fire in self-defence when she tried to ram her car into him in an “act of domestic terrorism”.
Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, pointed to bystander video he said directly contradicted the federal government’s “garbage narrative.” Civil liberties advocates said the video showed federal agents lacked any justification for using deadly force.
Bystander video of the Minneapolis incident showed masked officers approaching Ms Good’s Honda SUV while it was stopped at a perpendicular angle to the street, partially blocking traffic.
One agent is seen ordering her out of the car and grabbing on to the driver-side front door handle as the car pulls forward and steers away from the officers, one of whom jumps back and fires three shots into the front of the vehicle as it rolls past.
Video filmed by Mr Ross, the officer who opened fire, shows Ms Good appearing calm. She is heard telling him, “That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you” – moments before he opens fire as she drives forward into the street, steering the car away from him.
Ms Noem has said he was treated at a local hospital for unspecified injuries and released.
The car’s front bumper appears in the bystander video to pass Mr Ross before he shot at Good. It is unclear from any of the footage whether the vehicle made contact with him.
In any case, Mr Ross is shown remaining on his feet and can be seen walking after the incident, contradicting Mr Trump’s assertion on social media that the woman “ran over the Ice officer.”
Amid the sharply differing accounts of the shooting, Minnesota and Hennepin County law enforcement authorities said on Friday they were opening their own criminal inquiry of the incident separate from a federal investigation led by the FBI.
Some Trump administration officials, including vice-president JD Vance, asserted state prosecutors lack jurisdiction to charge a federal officer with a crime, though legal experts say federal immunity in such cases is not automatic.
Ms Good was shot dead just a few blocks from where George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer crushing his neck into the pavement with his knee during a videotaped arrest in May 2020.
Mr Floyd’s death sparked months of nationwide racial-justice protests during Mr Trump’s first term in office.
Federal-state tensions escalated further on Thursday when a US Border Patrol agent in Portland, Oregon, shot and wounded a man and woman in their car after an attempted vehicle stop. As in the Minneapolis incident, the DHS said the driver had tried to “weaponise” his vehicle and run over agents.
The DHS on Friday said the wounded driver and passenger were suspected gang associates from Venezuela who were in the US illegally. The agency said the woman had been involved in a prior shoot-out in Portland but provided no evidence of its allegations against the pair. – Reuters
