Neighbors describe peaceful morning interrupted by gunfire after deadly Minneapolis ICE shooting
Members of law enforcement work at the scene following a shooting by an ICE agent during federal law enforcement operations in Minneapolis on Wednesday.
(CNN) — A regular morning in south Minneapolis turned to horror Wednesday morning as residents of Portland Avenue rushed out of their homes to sounds of commotion and gunshots.
Emily Heller was in the middle of making breakfast when she heard whistles – a signal residents have used to warn their neighbors about the presence of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers – and agents quarreling with protesters on her street.
Without time to put on her shoes, Heller ran outside and saw a convoy of ICE agents on her street, yelling at a woman in an SUV who appeared to be blocking them from passing.
Moments later, the woman, Renee Nicole Good, 37, was fatally shot.
“My life is forever changed from having witnessed this,” Heller said.
Heller told CNN Good “was totally peaceful” before the agents began yelling at Good to move and “aggressively” approached her vehicle.
An ICE agent then tried to open her car door as another stood nearby. “She reversed a little bit,” Heller said, and then turned her wheels to begin pulling away.
“An ICE agent stepped in front of her vehicle and said, ‘Stop!’ and then — I mean, she was already moving — and then, point blank, shot her through her windshield in the face,” Heller said.
Trevor Heitkamp, another resident, was standing outside of his home when he heard chaos down the street. As he got closer, he saw ICE agents yelling at Good to move.
“The car backed up slowly and proceeded to pull forward pretty slowly,” while witnesses shouted in protest, he said.
“Then the agent who fired the weapon was on the opposite side of the car to me and I heard four, possibly five shots, and then the car sped forward because … this person’s injured and their foot went down,” Heitkamp said.
Nearby, Tyrice Jones was in an upstairs apartment when he heard gunshots and a crash, prompting him to go outside and see that the SUV driven by Good had smashed into a streetlight directly in front of his building.
Jones then saw a woman who identified herself as Good’s wife and was covered in blood sitting in the snowy front yard of Jones’ building, crying alongside a black lab dog.
“You guys just killed my wife!” the woman shouted.
The fatal shooting marks the latest dramatic escalation in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown on cities across the US, which has led to widespread protests and violence. The Department of Homeland Security announced it was deploying roughly 2,000 federal agents to Minneapolis this week in a new enforcement campaign following an alleged fraud scandal involving Somali-run childcare centers in Minnesota.
Simmering tensions quickly ramped up across the city Wednesday as federal and local officials painted opposing narratives of what happened between Good and the ICE agent.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said Good was “stalking and impeding” officers’ work throughout the day and tried to “weaponize her vehicle” to run over an officer, who she claimed “used his training to save his own life and that of his colleagues.”
City and state officials, however, blamed the Trump administration’s immigration tactics for her death.
Gov. Tim Walz said he has been “warning for weeks” that ICE operations in his state were a “threat to public safety,” while Minnesota Mayor Jacob Frey called the DHS account of the shooting “bullshit.”
“This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed,” Frey said during a news conference, telling ICE to “get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”
Videos show the fatal shooting
Three videos taken of the scene of the shooting and reviewed by CNN show two federal officers in a truck pulling up to Good’s car and exiting their vehicle.
“Get out of the car,” the officers approaching the woman’s driver-side door can be heard repeatedly saying.
One of the two officers can be seen pulling on the woman’s driver-side door as the other officer reaches the front of the car from the other side. The car then starts to move in reverse as one officer continues pulling on the car door, and the other officer is in front of the vehicle.
The vehicle begins to move forward and, at the same time, a third officer who had approached the vehicle pulls out his pistol and points it at the woman while moving away from the front of the car. He then opens fire.
As news of the shooting spread, protests quickly broke out near the scene, which is less than a mile from where, almost six years ago, the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer became a flashpoint for national tensions over police use of force and anti-Black racism.
Later Wednesday, demonstrators yelled and lobbed snowballs at federal officers and Minneapolis police in an outpouring of anger and grief.
But by evening, an uneasy calm had settled across the city. The glow of hundreds of candles illuminated the snowy residential street where Good had been killed. A crowd of people stretching an entire city block braved freezing temperatures to lay bouquets of flowers and quietly mourned her life in a vigil.
Good was a US citizen and a mother of three, according to the Associated Press. There were stuffed animals in her car when she was shot, Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan said.
Frey, the mayor, urged residents to remain calm in the wake of “chaos” in the city.
“This is a moment where all of us in Minneapolis and beyond, we can rise to the occasion,” Frey said. “We can show them who we are. We can show them the kind of courage, bravery, love and compassion that makes Minneapolis and that makes America.”
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CNN’s Robert Kuznia, Amanda Musa, Emma Tucker, Whitney Wild, Jeff Winter, Diego Mendoza, Taylor Romine and Alisha Ebrahimji contributed to this report.
