This is Alex Pretti and his childhood best friend and fellow Packers fan, Kristen, who shared this photo along with a beautiful, yet heartbreaking, message ⤵️
“There is something destabilizing about having known someone only as a child and then hearing they were gunned down in the street,” Kristen wrote.
“The person you see in your mind lying in that street is still a child. I’m sure his mother feels that way, too, or she sees him at every age all at once, including those he did not live to see.”
“After Alex was wrestled down to the ground, and after a federal agent pulled the trigger and Alex went still, nine more shots were fired into his body. I keep reading reports that there was a struggle before the first gunshot, but all I see is a person trying to keep his head off the ground while seven masked men surround and beat him.”
“Certainly, through his training as an ICU nurse, he knew that it was important to protect his head.”
“Once in the old neighborhood, when he was seven or eight, he’d fallen off his bike, his helmet splitting cleanly in half like a cantaloupe. He showed the halves to all the neighbor kids as a way to warn them to never ride without one.”
Because Alex was a good guy — from then, until the day he was executed.
Susan McAllister can still see Alex Pretti, who was her music student all four years he attended Green Bay Preble High School, standing in the bass section of the choir.
“My heart is broken under Alex’s death. And of course, like everybody else, I am deeply angry,” McAllister said at a meeting of the Green Bay School Board held on Jan. 26. “But I am also so, so proud of the young man I knew.”
McAllister was one of seven people to speak about Pretti, the man shot and killed by a federal agent on Jan. 24, at the meeting. They joined a growing chorus of people publicly remembering the man that he was during his life.
Susan Carlson, who taught Pretti in middle school, said in a statement read at the meeting that “at his core, Alex was a helper . . . I’m not one bit surprised that his final act on Earth was to help a woman who had been viciously thrown to the ground, and that his last words were, ‘Are you OK?’” Carslon wrote.
Micayla Pretti, Pretti’s younger sister, released a statement on Jan. 27 saying that her brother, “always wanted to make a difference in this world.”
“It’s devastating that he won’t be here to witness the impact he was making,” Micayla wrote. “All Alex ever wanted was to help someone — anyone. Even in his very last moments on this earth, he was simply trying to do just that.”
Here’s what we know about Alex Pretti.
Pretti’s sister calls him ‘my hero’
Micayla Pretti said in the statement that it was a “privilege” to be his sibling and said he “had a way of lighting up every room he walked into.”
“Through his work at the VA caring for the sickest patients, and passion to advance cancer research, he touched more lives than he probably ever realized,” she wrote. “My brother is, and always will be, my hero.”
She also rebuked against claims made by the Trump administration about Pretti’s actions in the confrontation that preceded his death.
Federal officials have alleged Pretti was carrying a gun he intended to use to “kill law enforcement.” Videos from bystanders − and a witness account in court filings − do not show Pretti brandishing a weapon when he approached agents.
“Hearing disgusting lies spread about my brother is absolutely gut-wrenching, and my family is deeply grateful so many people have stood up and helped tell his truth,” Micayla wrote.
Former patients warned Pretti to ‘be careful’ at protests
Marta Crownhart, a former ICU patient of Pretti’s at the Minneapolis Veteran’s Affairs hospital, said in a Jan. 26 interview on CNN that her former nurse was “always there for you.“
Crownhart, who also volunteers at the hospital, said that it has been “difficult” to be near the ICU Pretti worked after the shooting.
“He told me about his protest that he did because he felt so strongly about how Renee Good had died,” Crownhart said. “I remember telling him to be careful.”
Like Pretti’s sister, Crownhart denounced claims from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem – who branded the ICU nurse a “domestic terrorist” after his death.
“What was worse was listening to Kristi Noem talk about him the way she did … not even seeing the videos yet and not knowing exactly what had happened,” Crownhart said. “Calling him a domestic terrorist, I think that hurt worse than anything.”
Childhood friend calls Pretti ‘generous’ and ‘sweet’
Kristen Radtke, creative director for The Verge who grew up with Pretti, called Pretti “generous, curious, sweet,” in an essay for the outlet.
“We rollerbladed and had sleepovers, excitedly dragging our sleeping bags across the street from one house to the other.” Radtke, wrote of their youth in Green Bay. “When Alex had his bedroom window open, I could hear him singing all the way from my own open window. His voice was operatic and strong, carrying above the suburban drone of leafblowers and lawnmowers.”
She called the claims made by federal officials “flagrantly incongruous to anyone who watches the videos” and that she saw him attempting to protect his head during a struggle.
“Certainly, through his training as an ICU nurse, he knew that it was important to protect his head,” Radtke wrote. “Once in the old neighborhood, when he was seven or eight, he’d fallen off his bike, his helmet splitting cleanly in half like a cantaloupe. He showed the halves to all the neighbor kids as a way to warn them to never ride without one.
Who was Alex Pretti?
Pretti was raised in Green Bay, Wisconsin, an industrial city, home to the NFL’s Packers, that sits at the mouth of the Fox River. He was in the Green Bay Boy Choir, among other youth activities. As a young man, he acted with the Preble Players Theatre, a performing arts group at Green Bay Preble High School.
He attended the University of Minnesota Twin Cities where he graduated in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in biology, society and the environment, according to the Associated Press. Pretti returned to school to become a registered nurse, according to the AP, and would work at the Minneapolis VA.
Pretti was shot and killed during a confrontation with federal agents in Minneapolis on Jan. 24.
Two federal agents fired their guns during the shooting, according to a copy of a Department of Homeland Security internal investigation report obtained by USA TODAY.
The report states that the officers began firing after an agent yelled “he’s got a gun” multiple times. It does not say that the bullets from both agency members hit Pretti. It does not name the agents involved in the shooting
