'Planned and purposeful': Case made for first-degree murder charges in Alex Pretti's death

New evidence has emerged that Alex Pretti was known to federal agents more than a week before he was gunned down, and a veteran columnist made a case that the government officers who killed him committed first-degree murder.

CNN reported that Pretti suffered a broken rib about a week before his death when federal officers tackled him in an earlier encounter, although the Department of Homeland Security has no record of that incident, but Esquire's Charles Pierce walked through the available evidence to argue his killers deserve life in prison.

"So assuming that DHS is lying its bureaucratic ass off — which always is a good assumption — at least some of the overripe guys in masks stalking the streets of Minneapolis knew who Pretti was before anything happened last Saturday," Pierce wrote.

New video of the minutes leading up to the fatal shooting shows the 37-year-old Pretti and possibly 10 other people standing across the street from immigration officers as whistles sound to warn of the agents' presence, and the officers then cross the street to engage with him and others in the area.

That video contradicts administration claims that he and others were interfering with immigration enforcement, and Pierce argued that the earlier encounter – which was also recorded on video that came to light after his column was published – suggests that agents intentionally targeted the intensive care nurse.

"There’s no 'riot,'" Pierce wrote. "There aren’t enough people on the sidewalk for a decent hockey fight. An ICE officer walks right up to Pretti and initiates the violence. Then he and his colleagues swarm Pretti, who vanishes below a flurry of punches and kicks while onlookers plead with his attackers. And then five shots ring out, a pause, and then five more."

"Presumably, Pretti at least was incapacitated by the first volley, which means the second burst was meant to do what?" the columnist added. "Kill a dead man? Intimidate the witnesses? Everything that the ICE agents do in that video can arguably be interpreted as planned and purposeful."

Witness Max Shapiro recorded video of the Jan. 13 encounter and contacted the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which published the video and his account of that incident that he said began when about 15 to 20 people lobbed snowballs at agents and a man who appears to be Pretti kicking out the tail light of an agent's unmarked SUV that was driving away.

"Shapiro’s account matches events captured in a separate video posted to social media Jan. 28 by conservative influencer Nick Sortor, showing the encounter from a different angle," the Star Tribune reported. "A firearm is visible on Pretti’s waistband. Shapiro’s recording begins seconds after Pretti kicks the vehicle, when he is seen flipping off the car full of federal agents. One beelines toward him and spins him to the ground. Other agents shoot pepper balls, toss smoke canisters and threaten the use of chemical irritants in an attempt to keep the angry crowd back. Three other officers pounce on Pretti, appearing to strike him while he’s restrained."

Pretti eventually wriggled out of his coat and runs off to join the group of protesters, and Shapiro's video ends with a caravan of agents driving off as smoke fills the intersection, and Pretti asks others in the dispersing crowd if they're safe and okay.

"If all of them want to say that they didn’t recognize Pretti as the guy who’d already had his ribs broken in an earlier encounter with federal agents, let them say it under oath in a courtroom as part of their defense against a charge of murder in the first degree," Pierce said. "Maybe they’ll be loosened up for a plea bargain by then."