A Murder in Minneapolis
What the videos show us. Frame by frame.
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God knows, this was not the article that I wanted to write this morning. I had planned a cautionary note, warning against the temptation to rush to judgment amidst the fog of breaking news. I learned this lesson the hard way, spending years in live media, where I was often forced to come up with hot takes even as “facts” shapeshifted. And those cautions still apply — I come bearing caveats about unknowns and possible ambiguities.
This is also why law enforcement officials are often careful not to leap to conclusions or render judgments before all the facts are in. Once upon a time, government leaders withheld comment until the investigations had progressed.
But we do not live in that world anymore.
Before we even knew her name, Renee Nicole Good, had been labelled a “domestic terrorist” by the federal government. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem accused the dead woman of attempting to run over ICE officers, saying that she “rammed them with her vehicle. An officer of ours acted quickly and defensively, shot, to protect himself and the people around him.”1 J.D. Vance labelled her a “deranged leftist.”
President Trump himself rushed to justify killing her on a Minneapolis street, blaming the “radical left” for the shooting.
"It is a horrible thing to watch. The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self-defense," Trump said
Local elected officials reacted angrily, calling the Administration’s version of events “bullshit” and “garbage.” So, inevitably, the incident quickly became a political Rorschach test.
But this is not a mere matter of He Said/She Said. Because we have a video. And it refutes the Trump/Noem version in almost every respect.
The video also reminds us that incidents like this are not a one-off. They are the inevitable result of a deliberate policy of fear, force, and brutality. As Olivia Troye writes today:
What happened in Minneapolis was not an accident. It was not confusion. And it sure as hell was not "domestic terrorism." It was the predictable outcome of a federal law-enforcement apparatus that has been unleashed without restraint, without accountability, and without regard for the people it is sworn to protect, sanctioned by the President of the United States and enabled by an incompetent puppet of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary.
Trump and his cronies believe that they can murder a young woman in broad daylight and get away with it. We’re about to find out if they are right.
Happy Thursday.
Note to readers: Truth matters more than ever. But so does moral clarity. That’s why we do this. You can be a bystander, or you can join the fight.
What the video shows us
After an exhaustive review, this morning’s Wapo reports:
A frame-by-frame analysis of video footage, however, raises questions about those accounts. The SUV did move toward the ICE agent as he stood in front of it. But the agent was able to move out of the way and fire at least two of three shots from the side of the vehicle as it veered past him, according to the analysis.
Video taken by a witness shows Renee Nicole Good’s vehicle, a burgundy Honda Pilot SUV, stopped in the middle of a one-way road in a residential area of south Minneapolis on Wednesday morning. That footage and other videos examined by The Washington Post do not show the events leading up to that moment.
The agent, who has not been publicly identified, can be seen standing behind Good’s SUV, holding up a phone and pointing it toward a woman who also has her phone out. The two appear to be recording each other.
The agent then walks around the passenger side of Good’s vehicle.
A pickup truck pulls up, and two additional agents exit the vehicle and approach Good, the video shows. A voice can be heard saying to “get out” of the car at least two times. One of the agents puts a hand on the opening of the driver’s side window and with his other hand tugs twice quickly on the door handle, but the driver’s door does not open.
That same agent puts his hand farther in the opening of Good’s window, and almost simultaneously, the SUV begins to back up.
The agent who was first seen behind Good’s SUV reemerges in front of the vehicle, still appearing to hold up a phone. The SUV quickly pulls forward, and then veers to the right, in the correct direction of traffic on the one-way street.
As the vehicle moves forward, video shows, the agent moves out of the way and at nearly the same time fires his first shot. The footage shows that his other two shots were fired from the side of the vehicle.
This is the key: Two of the shots were fired from the side of the vehicle… after it no longer posed any threat to the officer. 2
Here is the NYT account of what the videos show:
Let’s look at the scene again more closely.
This is the agent who shoots the driver.
He walks around the car filming and disappears from view. Other agents pull up and order the driver to exit her vehicle.
One of them grabs at the door handle and reaches inside. The SUV reverses, then turns right, apparently attempting to leave.
At the same time, the agent filming crosses toward the left of the vehicle and grabs his gun.
He opens fire on the motorist and continues shooting as she drives past.
The moment the agent fires, he is standing here to the left of the SUV and the wheels are pointing to the right away from the agent.
This appears to conflict with allegations that the SUV was ramming or about to ram the officer.
President Trump and others said the federal agent was hit by the SUV, often pointing to another video filmed from a different angle. And it’s true that at this moment, in this grainy, low-resolution footage, it does look like the agent is being struck by the SUV. But when we synchronize it with the first clip, we can see the agent is not being run over.
In fact, his feet are positioned away from the SUV.
The SUV crashes into a white car parked down the road. A bystander runs toward the collision.
The federal agents on scene do not appear to rush to provide emergency medical care. Eventually, the agent who shot the motorist approaches the vehicle. Seconds later, he turns back around and tells his colleagues to call 911.
Agents block several bystanders who attempt to provide medical care, including one who identifies himself as a physician. At the same time, several agents, including the agent who opened fire, get in their vehicles and drive off, apparently altering the active crime scene.
Frame by Frame. An Even Deeper Dive.
If you want to do a Zapruder Film-like second-by-second breakdown of the shooting, pay special attention to the officer’s legs and feet. they show clearly when he is in front of the vehicle and when he is clear and to the side. Michael Sellers provides a very useful breakdown:
The first frame of forward movement of the tires is at 6:06 (six seconds and six frames —30 frames per second)
The officer goes for his weapon and it clears his holster at 6:16.
First shot is fired at 7:19. Both feet are outside the perimeter of the car and the car’s tires are clearly in a right turn position moving away from the shooter.
Second shot is fired at 8:06 with the officer two feet to the left side of the vehicle, firing at a 90% angle laterally through the open passenger window.
The third shot is at 8:18 and is from the side and slightly behind the driver.
The aftermath shows the shooter standing, uninjured.
Additionally, here is a visual of the front windshield showing only one shot entering the windshield, consistent with what is described above. The location and position of the shot are consistent with the shot coming from a position not directly in front of the vehicle.
You can follow Sellers’ coverage here.
Who was Renee Nicole Good?
Ganger said her daughter is “not part of anything like that at all,” referring to protesters challenging ICE agents.
“Renee was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known,” she said. “She was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being.”
An Instagram account that appears to belong to Good describes her as a “poet and writer and wife and mom and shitty guitar strummer from Colorado; experiencing Minneapolis, MN.”
Good had previously been married to Timmy Ray Macklin Jr., who died in 2023 at the age of 36. Macklin’s father, Timmy Ray Macklin Sr., was shocked to hear the news that Good had been shot and killed.
He said Good and his son had a child who is now 6 years old.
“There’s nobody else in his life,” Macklin said. “I’ll drive. I’ll fly. To come and get my grandchild.”
Today’s Podcast
Thursday dogs
Eli is unruffled by the presence of a dozen turkeys in his domain. He’s a tolerant dog.
How full of shit was Noem’s claim? Even Border czar Tom Homan distanced himself from her spin:
“The investigation has just started,” said Homan after CBS Evening News host Tony Dokoupil asked the border czar to respond to a video of the shooting. “I’m not gonna make a judgment call on one video when there’s a hundred videos out there. I wasn’t on the scene, I’m not an officer that may have bodycam video. It’d be unprofessional to comment on what I think happened in that situation. Let the investigation play out and hold people accountable based on the investigation.”
Dokoupil replied, “I think many members of the public are calling for the same thing and so they’re confused. Maybe you can help me understand how the Department of Homeland Security could conclude so swiftly that this is, quote, ‘an act of domestic terrorism.’ That this woman, quote, ‘weaponized her vehicle.’ By the very same standard you describe, this investigation is just getting started.”
“That’s a question for Homeland Security. I’m the border czar,” shot back Homan. “What good is it to do right now to pre-judge the facts of what happened without giving law enforcement professionals, whether it’s the FBI or the local police there, give them time to look at all the videos, talk to all of the witnesses, talk to the officers, and make an educated decision on what occurred today?”
Via the Atlantic: Firing at a car like this is problematic as a matter of both law and practice. Under a 1985 Supreme Court ruling, police aren’t permitted to open fire on someone who is fleeing unless that person presents a serious danger to the officer or others. Justice Byron White wrote that “it is no doubt unfortunate when a suspect who is in sight escapes,” but “it is not better that all felony suspects die than that they escape.” (The driver in question here was not clearly under arrest, much less a felony suspect.) Prosecuting police who open fire is challenging, though, because prosecutors and juries tend to grant wide deference to officers who say they feared that they or others were in peril.
Shooting into moving cars is often a bad idea, though, even when it might be legally justified. Officers who fear they are in danger often miss their target—sometimes harmlessly, sometimes striking bystanders or other officers. “If you actually hit the driver and are successful, now you’ve got an unguided missile,” Geoffrey Alpert, a professor at the University of South Carolina and an expert on police use of force, told me in 2021. “It’s just as likely if you shoot someone that a foot’s going to go on the gas as on the brake.” In this case, photos suggested that the SUV struck another car after its driver was shot.
I am afraid the momentum of this dystopian period of our country's history continues to accelerate. I am afraid that everything I thought good about this country was an illusion. I am afraid that those that have different opinions from mine want me dead. I am afraid that the politicians that we placed our trust in are hollow suits who entered politics for personal financial gain and ego gratification. I am afraid that corruption in the three branches of government is so out of control that there is no way for a correction through elections. I am afraid that this is how it has been gamed out by the plutocrats and foreign leaders around the world. And I am afraid that the best days of our country are well behind us. But I hope that I am wrong on all of these.
Thank you for a very informative and helpful survey of the information that’s available. Especially the detailed analysis of the video tape. It doesn’t make what happened any easier to watch but hopefully this will persuade local police to arrest ICE agent. There can be no justification for this.