(MINNEAPOLIS) The man shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis Saturday grew up in Wisconsin. Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old intensive care nurse at the Minneapolis VA Hospital, was a 2006 graduate of Green Bay Preble High School.
Pretti’s parents, Michael and Susan Pretti, now live in Colorado. They told the Associated Press they knew their son was protesting since the killing of Renee Good, but had told him to “not engage.”
“He cared about people deeply. And he was very upset with what was happening in Minneapolis and throughout the United States with ICE, as millions of other people are upset,” said Pretti’s father Michael, who now lives in Colorado.
The Department of Homeland Security said Pretti was shot after he approached Border Patrol officers with a handgun. Witness statements and videos are at odds with that claim. In a statement, the Pretti family said “The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting.”
Pretti grew up in Bellevue and participated in show choir and musicals in high school. He played football, baseball, and ran track.
(Wisconsin Radio Network and ABC News contributed to this report.)
