Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of contaminating the crime scene after a 37-year-old woman was shot dead after she drove at an agent.
‘[It was] total chaos. I have very limited work in this from training in the National Guard but I’ve had a lot of training now to watch how our professionals operate,’ Walz said during a press conference on Wednesday afternoon following the shooting.
‘After this person was shot, federal agents are milling around, touching the vehicle at a crime scene – I don’t know what to tell you and I don’t quite know how to respond to the question other than my responsibility is the protection of the people of Minnesota,’ Walz said.
‘You can be assured that whether it’s the State Patrol or the National Guard their deployment is there to protect Minnesotans from whatever it is.
‘If it’s an act of nature, a global pandemic or in this case if it is a rogue federal agent. I don’t know at this time. I want to be very careful,’ Walz stressed.
‘It’s unprecedented we have the federal government already determined exactly what happened here and the motives of an individual that we don’t even know the name.’
The victim was named by her mother Donna Ganger as 37-year-old poet Renee Nicole Good, a mother of three.
‘She was probably terrified,’ Ganger said to the Minnesota Star Tribune.
ICE insist the woman was trying to use the SUV she was driving as a deadly weapon.
Footage of the shooting showed the victim blocking the road with her car until ICE agents told her to move away.
She reversed to head back down the road as an agent tried to open its driver-side door handle before she drove off. Three shots then rang out.
The woman lost control of the SUV and slammed it into parked cars and a light pole at high speed, prompting screams of shock from horrified onlookers.
The woman’s SUV was seen with a bullet hole through the driver’s side windshield.
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin claimed the woman ‘weaponized her vehicle’ and called her actions an ‘act of domestic terrorism’.
McLaughlin said the ICE agent escalated the situation because he was ‘fearing for his own life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement, and the safety of the public.’
‘He used his training and saved his own life and that of his fellow officers,’ she said in a statement, describing the gunshots as ‘defensive shots’.
However, Mayor Frey claimed DHS was trying ‘to spin this as an act of self-defense.’
‘This is bulls**t,’ he said at a press conference. ‘I have a message for our community, our city, and ICE – to ICE, get the f**k out of Minneapolis.’
‘We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is safety and you are doing exactly the opposite.’
Frey highlighted how ‘people are being hurt’ and ‘families are being ripped apart’ by immigration officials.
‘Long-term Minneapolis residents that have contributed so greatly to our city, to our culture, to our economy, are being terrorized and now somebody is dead. That’s on you – and it’s also on you to leave,’ he said.
The FBI and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension are investigating the shooting, O’Hara said, as he disputed DHS’ version of events.
Walz asked his citizens to ‘remain calm’ as he slammed DHS’ narrative as ‘propaganda.’