By Renee Hickman, Brad Brooks and Joseph Ax
MINNEAPOLIS, Jan 9 (Reuters) – The White House on Friday reposted on social media a new video taken from the cellphone of the Immigration officer who fatally shot a Minnesota woman in her car this week, adding to the documentation of an incident that has sparked days of nationwide protests.
The 47-second video shows 37-year-old Renee Good telling the officer, “That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you,” moments before he opens fire after Good puts the car in gear in an apparent effort to pull back into the street.
The new clip is likely to further inflame tensions between state officials and officials in President Donald Trump’s administration, who have offered starkly different accounts of the shooting. Minnesota authorities on Friday said they were opening their own criminal investigation, after some state leaders said the FBI was refusing to cooperate with state investigators.
The video, obtained by the website Alpha News and verified by Reuters, begins as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, Jonathan Ross, exits his car and approaches Good’s Honda SUV, which is partially blocking traffic. A black dog is visible through an open rear window.
As he circles around the front of the car, Good reverses farther out of the street before speaking to him through her open window. Ross then continues around the vehicle’s rear, where he films the vehicle’s license plate and encounters Good’s wife, Becca Good, in the street. She tells him, “We don’t change our plates every morning, just so you know. It’ll be the same plate when you come talk to us later. That’s fine. U.S. citizen.”
Becca Good, who was filming the ICE agent with her own phone, then adds: “You want to come at us? I say go get yourself some lunch, big boy.”
At that point, another ICE agent approaches Renee Good in the vehicle and orders her to get out of the car. She can be seen reversing briefly, then putting the car into gear and turning the steering wheel, apparently trying to drive away.
As the car moves forward, Ross shouts “Whoa!” Shots can be heard, and the car briefly disappears from the frame of the video as the officer’s hand holding the phone appears to flail about.
The video then shows the car careening down the street, while someone can be heard muttering, “Fucking bitch.”
Vice President JD Vance, who has accused Good of deliberately using her car as a weapon, reposted the video, saying it showed the officer’s life was endangered.
Other videos of the shooting show Good turning her wheels away from Ross as she drives forward, while he fires three shots while jumping backward from the front of the car. The final two shots appear to be aimed through the driver’s side window, after the car’s front bumper has already passed by the officer’s legs.
It is unclear whether Ross made any contact with the car, but videos show he stayed on his feet and walked calmly toward the car after the shooting.
Officials from the Republican Trump administration have defended the shooting as self-defense and accused Good of an act of “domestic terrorism” – a narrative described by Democratic Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey as “garbage” based on the video footage.
Good was a mother of three, including a 6-year-old son. Becca Good issued a statement to Minnesota Public Radio on Friday, saying the two had “stopped to support our neighbors.”
“We had whistles,” she wrote. “They had guns.”
She also described her late wife as someone who had “sparkles coming out of her pores.”
“Renee lived by an overarching belief: there is kindness in the world and we need to do everything we can to find it where it resides and nurture it where it needs to grow,” she said. “Renee was a Christian who knew that all religions teach the same essential truth: we are here to love each other, care for each other, and keep each other safe and whole.”
SEPARATE INVESTIGATIONS
Mary Moriarty, the top prosecutor for Minneapolis’ Hennepin County, and the state’s Democratic attorney general, Keith Ellison, said on Friday they were opening their own probe into the shooting.
The announcement came one day after the state’s lead investigative agency, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said the FBI had reversed its initial cooperation and blocked the BCA from scene evidence, witness interviews and other material.
The decision could set up separate, parallel probes into the shooting.
U.S. officials, including Vance, have dismissed the idea that a federal officer could face state criminal charges. But Moriarty said the decision was hers to make.
“To be sure, there are complex legal issues involved when a federal law enforcement officer is involved. But the law is clear: we do have jurisdiction to make this decision,” she said.
The announcement underscored how the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Democratic-run cities has frayed the trust between local and federal officials.
Earlier in the day, Frey accused the Trump administration of trying to predetermine the investigation’s outcome by cutting out state authorities.
“This is a time to follow the law,” Frey said. “This is not a time to hide from the facts.”
In Portland, Oregon, on Thursday afternoon, a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and wounded a man and woman in their car after an attempted vehicle stop. As in Minnesota, the Department of Homeland Security said the driver “weaponized” the car in an effort to run over the agent, who fired in self-defense.
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson, echoing Frey, said he could not be sure the government’s account was grounded in fact without an independent investigation.
The two shootings have drawn thousands of protesters in Minneapolis, Portland and other U.S. cities, with more demonstrations expected over the weekend.
In both cases, Democratic mayors and governors have called on the Trump administration to pull federal officers out, arguing that their presence is sowing chaos and needlessly creating tensions on the streets.
While the operation is part of Trump’s broader immigration crackdown, the president has for months aimed political attacks at the state, particularly its large Somali-American community.
(Reporting by Renee Hickman in Minneapolis and Brad Brooks in Colorado; Additional reporting by Ryan Jones in Toronto, Rich McKay in Atlanta and Maria Tsvetkova in New York; Writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Donna Bryson and Matthew Lewis)
Disclaimer: This report is auto generated from the Reuters news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.