Exclusive: Renee Good Was Trapped Inside Her SUV—Rescue Crews Tried to Revive Her While Partner Becca Was Taken to the Hospital

On a frigid winter morning on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis, Renee Nicole Good, 37, a mother of three, had finished one of the quiet rituals of daily life. After dropping off her 6-year-old son at school, Good and her committed partner Becca, 40, were driving a maroon Honda Pilot when Becca suggested they take a detour, as federal ICE agents had flooded the city and protesters were already gathering.

Good agreed to go, a decision that would keep her from ever making it home. Within minutes, at 9:37 a.m., she was fatally shot three times behind the wheel by Jonathan Ross, who joined ICE in 2015 and was serving in 2025 as a firearms instructor and a member of the F.B.I.’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.

“I heard three pops of the gun,” said witness Lynette Reini-Grandell. “The people around me started screaming … ‘You killed her!’”

The first 911 call came in at 9:39 a.m., setting off a cascade of panic, confusion and violence that would unfold across the neighborhood on Portland Avenue. One caller told dispatchers he had just watched an ICE agent shoot a woman at close range as she sat in her car, according to an incident report released by Minnesota police officials.

“She’s f—in’ dead,” caller Matt said. “They f—in’ shot her. There were about 15 ICE agents and the woman was shot “’cause she wouldn’t open her car door,” according to the report. Multiple voices could be heard yelling and screaming in the background of the first call.

Within a minute, another call came in. This caller said they, too, had seen ICE shoot someone inside a vehicle — and then watched the car crash. “So, I don’t think they’re okay,” the caller said of the driver. “Uh, I’m sorry, I had to walk away because I have young kids, and ICE is everywhere over there.”

Almost immediately after that, another 911 caller reported seeing “blood all over the driver and then the partner who was trying to provide assistance.” That caller added that the agent who shot the woman was still on the scene, wearing an ICE tactical vest.

By then, tensions had escalated at the scene. As SWAT team members approached and began yelling at bystanders to get back, the reality of what had happened cut through the noise. Becca began screaming, “My wife!” according to a neighbor, who asked to remain anonymous.

Becca, who previously referred to Good as her wife, was holding her, sobbing, covered in her blood, according to witnesses. Photos of Good’s SUV at the scene showed a blood-soaked airbag and stuffed animals in the glove compartment — ordinary remnants of a life interrupted.

“I saw the hole in the windshield. It looked chest level,” James, a neighbor, former firefighter and first responder told PEOPLE. Inside the car, the damage was unmistakable.

“There was so much blood around the airbag. The white airbag was red. There was so much blood,” he continued, shaking his head. “Renee’s body and her front seat were covered in blood. I could see the bullet hole through her left side. It was very, very gruesome.”

At 9:42 a.m., less than five minutes after the first 911 call, a fire vehicle arrived. Responders found Good unresponsive in her car; she had been shot several times. She had two apparent gunshot wounds on the right side of her chest, another on her left forearm and a fourth on the left side of her head, according to the records. Blood was flowing from her left ear and her pupils were dilated.

After moving her and continuing to assess her condition, responders found she still wasn’t breathing and had no pulse, according to the records. Chest compressions and other lifesaving measures followed in an attempt to resuscitate her. She wasn’t breathing and had “inconsistent, irregular, thready pulse activity.”

“They were trying to revive her … but Renee was stuck in the car. I was out here when they pulled her out of the car but they were struggling for a long time,” said James. “Not very nicely they pulled her out and then they ended up just carrying her out of here. They didn’t have a stretcher at first. Three people carried her. They walked her down holding her to the ambulance at the end of the block.”

The incident report — portions of which were redacted — leaves unclear exactly when EMS arrived. What is clear is that it took roughly fifteen minutes after the first 911 call for Good to be transported to the hospital. Resuscitation efforts continued on scene and en route. They were finally stopped at around 10:30 a.m., roughly an hour after she was shot.

Becca walked to the closest neighbor’s yard and sat on the steps before Good was removed from the SUV. “Hey, can we get her a towel to clean her face off?” a roommate asked James, as Becca stood in the front yard of their sober home, drenched and stunned. As she began to stand and cry, she said, “There’s a dog in the back. Can someone get it for me, please?”

“They couldn’t get [Renee] out of the car, she was stuck in there for about 20 minutes or so,” James said. “Becca left to go to the hospital before they even got her partner out of the car. She was traumatized. Crying, completely in shock. She was just stunned. I mean, she was holding her dead loved one in her arms.”

Even as emergency crews worked to save Good’s life, federal agent Ross who shot her was already gone. By 10:03 a.m., the agent was listed as “no longer on scene” and had been transported to the federal building, according to the incident report. As reports poured in from the street, one 911 call came from someone claiming they were calling on behalf of DHS, offering a very different version of events. “We had officers stuck in a vehicle and we had agitators on scene,” the caller said. “And we have shots fired by our locals.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said on Jan. 14 that Ross suffered internal bleeding in his torso after being taken to the hospital, but declined to answer further questions. An FBI representative said, “No further information is available for release at this time in accordance with DOJ policy.”

The report itself reflects a scene still unraveling long after the gunfire stopped. “Still [attempting] to figure out who’s in change,” one entry reads. Ross hasn’t been accused of a crime. But use-of-force experts have openly questioned his actions. “In order to use deadly force, your life or someone else’s life must be in immediate danger,” said Chris Burbank, a former Salt Lake City police chief who doesn’t believe Good posed any such risk.

The investigation has been contentious from the start. Federal officials said the FBI would handle the inquiry, arguing Minnesota authorities lacked jurisdiction. State Attorney General Keith Ellison pushed back, calling for “a fair, transparent investigation of all of the facts.”

As the investigation unfolded, the neighborhood remained on edge. In the hours after Good was killed, protesters gathered near the scene. The incident report describes “agitators,” repeated calls for backup and attempts to block an ICE convoy. Around 11 a.m., Border Patrol agents deployed pepper spray.

Roughly two hours after Good was fatally shot, DHS released a statement accusing her of committing an “act of domestic terrorism.” The agency claimed the ICE officer relied on his training and “fired defensive shots” at a vehicle they said was trying to “run over” agents.

Good’s family rejected that characterization outright. Despite the administration’s claims, her mother Donna and father Tim Ganger, along with her four siblings, told PEOPLE that Good “was a beautiful light of our family and brought joy to anyone she met. She was relentlessly hopeful and optimistic which was contagious. We all already miss her more than words could ever express.”

Back at the scene, the physical evidence of what happened remained embedded in the block.

“All of the rest of the blood is underneath the vigil,” said James. “The blood that I know that they did clean up was the blood that came from Becca that was over here in my yard. I have met Renee a few times. I tell people, she’s been in the neighborhood.”

“We’ve seen her vehicle all the time. She’s helped other neighbors out,” he continued. “She was a kind, sweet lady. She helped everybody. If you needed help, she was there and could help, she’d help. And that’s the sweetest thing ever. I think the first time I met her, her vehicle was actually stuck in the snow and I helped her get it out.”

Witnesses said Becca collapsed into grief on the steps of a neighbor’s house. She was later reunited with her dog, stroking him in stunned silence before being taken to the hospital. “We stopped to support our neighbors,” Becca said in a statement on Jan. 9. “We had whistles. They had guns.”

Even as protests, vigils and political fallout continue, the aftermath is most sharply felt just around the corner from where Good was killed and about a mile from the site of George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, a grim echo of the city’s long history of public grief and dissent. And just three days after Good’s killing, on Saturday, Jan. 10, the vigil at the site of her death was dense with thousands of flowers, signs and paintings while some knelt in prayer, crying softly, absorbing that quiet agony in their own way.

As night fell and the cold deepened, the tone shifted from solemn remembrance to simmering outrage. Those closest to the heart of the vigil waved signs reading “REMEMBER” “RENEE GOOD. ICE BAD” and “F— ICE” and chanted against the agency and the Trump administration, led by a protester shouting through a megaphone.

In a final statement, Becca spoke not only of grief, but of the future she now faces alone: “I am now left to raise our son and to continue teaching him, as Renee believed, that there are people building a better world for him.”