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About this Episode
pWotD Episode 3190: Killing of Alex Pretti
Welcome to popular Wiki of the Day, spotlighting Wikipedia's most visited pages, giving you a peek into what the world is curious about today.
With 626,975 views on Sunday, 25 January 2026 our article of the day is Killing of Alex Pretti.
On January 24, 2026, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old American intensive care nurse for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, was shot and killed by United States Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This occurred amid widespread protests against a federal immigration crackdown and followed the January 7 fatal shooting of Renée Good, also by federal officers.
Video recordings of the incident showed Pretti filming law enforcement agents with his phone and directing traffic. Pretti stood between an agent and a woman whom the agent had pushed to the ground, putting his arm around the woman. He was subsequently pepper-sprayed and wrestled to the ground by several federal agents, with around six surrounding him when he was shot and killed. Bystander video verified and reviewed by Reuters and the The Wall Street Journal appears to show an agent removing a gun and moving away from Pretti less than a second before another agent fires at him.
According to The Guardian, while Pretti was legally licensed to carry a handgun, the publicly available video evidence reviewed by the paper does not show him holding one. In reviewing video evidence, both Reuters and The New York Times concluded that he was holding a cell phone, not a gun, in the moments before being tackled. Agents appear to shoot at him at least ten times within five seconds, beginning while he was pinned to the ground and continuing after he collapsed and his body lay motionless.
The Trump administration defended the shooting, claiming that Pretti was an aggressor. The Minnesota Star Tribune assessed that these claims are uncorroborated and contradicted by witnesses and video evidence. The shooting accelerated ongoing protests against US immigration forces locally and nationally. As with the Renée Good case, state investigators were denied access to the shooting scene by the federal government.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 09:40 UTC on Monday, 26 January 2026.
For the full current version of the article, see Killing of Alex Pretti on Wikipedia.
This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.
Follow us on Mastodon at @[email protected].
Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.
Until next time, I'm generative Joanna.
Welcome to popular Wiki of the Day, spotlighting Wikipedia's most visited pages, giving you a peek into what the world is curious about today.
With 626,975 views on Sunday, 25 January 2026 our article of the day is Killing of Alex Pretti.
On January 24, 2026, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old American intensive care nurse for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, was shot and killed by United States Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This occurred amid widespread protests against a federal immigration crackdown and followed the January 7 fatal shooting of Renée Good, also by federal officers.
Video recordings of the incident showed Pretti filming law enforcement agents with his phone and directing traffic. Pretti stood between an agent and a woman whom the agent had pushed to the ground, putting his arm around the woman. He was subsequently pepper-sprayed and wrestled to the ground by several federal agents, with around six surrounding him when he was shot and killed. Bystander video verified and reviewed by Reuters and the The Wall Street Journal appears to show an agent removing a gun and moving away from Pretti less than a second before another agent fires at him.
According to The Guardian, while Pretti was legally licensed to carry a handgun, the publicly available video evidence reviewed by the paper does not show him holding one. In reviewing video evidence, both Reuters and The New York Times concluded that he was holding a cell phone, not a gun, in the moments before being tackled. Agents appear to shoot at him at least ten times within five seconds, beginning while he was pinned to the ground and continuing after he collapsed and his body lay motionless.
The Trump administration defended the shooting, claiming that Pretti was an aggressor. The Minnesota Star Tribune assessed that these claims are uncorroborated and contradicted by witnesses and video evidence. The shooting accelerated ongoing protests against US immigration forces locally and nationally. As with the Renée Good case, state investigators were denied access to the shooting scene by the federal government.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 09:40 UTC on Monday, 26 January 2026.
For the full current version of the article, see Killing of Alex Pretti on Wikipedia.
This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.
Follow us on Mastodon at @[email protected].
Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.
Until next time, I'm generative Joanna.
No transcript available for this episode.
