The woman fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis on Wednesday was identified by the Minnesota Star Tribune as Renee Nicole Good.
The newspaper spoke to a woman who identified herself as Good’s mother. The woman, Donna Ganger, called Good “one of the kindest people I’ve ever known.”
“She was extremely compassionate,” Ganger told the Tribune. “She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being.”
The Minneapolis City Council described Good, 37, in a joint statement as a resident who was out “caring for her neighbors” when she was killed.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said she was shot after people began blocking officers during an immigration-related operation in the city.
At a news conference Wednesday night, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said the woman ignored commands to get out of the car she was driving and tried to run over an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in an “attempt to kill or to cause bodily harm to agents.” That officer was the one who shot the woman, Noem said.
The officer was struck by the vehicle and treated at a hospital before being released, Noem said. She declined to answer a question about whether the officer opened fire before or after allegedly having been struck by the vehicle.
“I know you keep asking that, but that doesn’t mean that the FBI is going to give you an answer today. There will be an investigation; we want to make sure that it’s factual,” Noem said in reply to a reporter’s question.
Her mother told the Star Tribune that Good was not part of ICE-related protests. Shortly after the shooting, local and state officials disputed federal authorities’ narrative of events, with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz saying he had seen a video of the shooting and warning people not to believe “the propaganda machine.”
A video of the encounter obtained by NBC News shows officers ordering a person out of an SUV in a residential part of Minneapolis. One of the officers can be seen trying to open the driver’s side door before the vehicle drives in reverse a few feet, then begins driving forward.
As the SUV moves, multiple gunshots can be heard and the vehicle crashes into a parked car. It is not clear what happened before the part of the encounter that was captured on video.
The FBI and the Minnesota Department of Public Safety’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension are investigating the shooting.
The Department of Homeland Security has deployed hundreds more immigration agents to Minneapolis in response to a viral video from a right-wing YouTuber alleging that Somali-run day care centers were receiving federal subsidies without caring for children.
The Minnesota Department of Children, Youth and Families investigated the allegations and said compliance checks at the facilities found children present at all but one that closed in 2022.