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The woman who was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Wednesday in Minneapolis seemed “obviously scared” and was trying to leave, an eyewitness to the killing told HuffPost, disputing government claims that the ICE agent acted in self-defense.
Emily Heller, 39, stepped outside her home around 9:30 a.m. after hearing whistles and honking by community members who were alerting their neighbors about ICE agents’ presence. Heller said she saw a woman, since identified as 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in a vehicle blocking a convoy of six or seven ICE vehicles on a one-way street.
“The ICE agents got out of their vehicles and were screaming at her to ‘move, move, move,’” Heller said. “She wasn’t moving at first, and then they came over to her side of the car and tried to open the door, I assume to drag her out.”
“She was obviously scared — she was going to leave,” Heller said. “She reversed a little bit and then started to move forward. And as she was starting to move forward, one of the ICE agents stood in front of her car, leaned across her hood and then fired three or four shots right into, it seemed like, her face.”
Good, was “one of the kindest people I’ve ever known,” her mother, Donna Ganger, told the Minnesota Star Tribune. “She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being.”
Good had a young son, whose father died in 2023, according to the Star Tribune. “There’s nobody else in his life,” Timmy Ray Macklin Sr., the boy’s grandfather, told the paper. “I’ll drive. I’ll fly. To come get my grandchild.”
Other eyewitness videos corroborate Heller’s account of the shooting. One, which shows a clear view of the driver’s side of the vehicle, shows multiple armed agents approaching Good and attempting to open the driver’s door. The vehicle begins to leave when one of the officers fires multiple shots.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed Good had committed an “act of domestic terrorism” against ICE officers and “attempted to run them over and rammed them with her vehicle.” Noem claimed the officer “acted quickly and defensively” to “protect himself and the people around him.”
“No way,” Heller said of DHS’ claim that the ICE agent acted in self-defense. The masked agent who shot Good “put himself in front of her,” Heller said.
