Woman arrested for 2011 cold case murder of Iowa real estate agent

(MINNEAPOLIS) — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday said that in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday, federal officials issued public statements about the incident based on “the best information” they had at the time and “what we knew to be true on the ground.”

Noem previously suggested on the day of the shooting that the agents’ actions were justified, claiming at a press briefing that Pretti had “attacked” officers and was “wishing to inflict harm” on them. But appearing Thursday on Fox News, Noem offered no evidence to support such claims, saying instead that the scene was “chaotic.”

After her initial statements, Minnesota officials were quick to push back on her public comments, pointing to the multiple videos from witnesses which appeared to tell a different story.

She said the FBI is now leading the investigation, though officials previously said DHS was investigating, with assistance from the FBI.

Noem’s shift in tone comes amid growing criticism of how quickly officials characterized the shooting. Some critics told ABC News that issuing definitive conclusions following immigration enforcement shootings is “incredibly irresponsible” and may undermine the long-term credibility of federal agencies.

The critics warned that rushing to label suspects as “domestic terrorists” — as White House adviser Stephen Miller and Noem did in the aftermath of the shooting deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good — or declaring shootings justified before evidence is reviewed represents a departure from the norm.

“It’s just incredibly irresponsible to rush to conclusions,” said John Sandweg, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Obama administration.  “When you have a senior adviser to the president and the cabinet secretary saying, ‘These are the facts, this is what happened’ … you’ve now undermined all the credibility and really made it impossible for the public to have confidence in that investigation.”

‘Public trust is everything’
An ABC News review of several recent incidents involving federal immigration agents found a consistent pattern: high-level officials publicized findings within hours of gunfire, only for those initial accounts to be challenged later by body camera footage, witness videos or court filings.

In at least five major cases, officials appeared to make public declarations about the incidents before formal investigations had reached final conclusions about those assertions.

“Public trust is everything to these agencies, and it just destroys them when you tell something that is so visibly and obviously contradicted by the video evidence,” Sandweg said.

Jason Houser, a former ICE chief of staff under the Biden administration, told ABC News that the rush to conclusions suggests the focus has shifted away from public safety toward a political narrative.

“It just shows that this is about the political debate. It’s not about actually arresting the most convicted criminals,” Houser said. “It should … create a lot of distrust that can tear at the core trust in law enforcement, especially federal law enforcement.”

In response to questions regarding the swiftness of the administration’s public comments and  the information released following major incidents, a DHS spokesperson said, “DHS follows proper legal processes and protocols for all statements disseminated by the Department.”

What Pretti video shows
In the shooting involving Pretti, DHS officials released a detailed statement just two and a half hours after the incident, claiming he “approached” officers with a handgun. Miller labeled Pretti a “domestic terrorist” and a “would-be assassin” on social media less than four hours after the gunfire.

Noem, during her Thursday interview, responded to critics on Capitol Hill calling for her resignation by stating she is “following the law, and enforcing the laws like President Trump promised he would do.”

Video analyzed by ABC News showed agents pinning Pretti down and removing a weapon from his waist before the shooting occurred — contradicting the initial claims from officials. Three days later, Miller issued a statement acknowledging that the initial DHS account was based on “reports from CBP on the ground” and suggested protocol may not have been followed.

“Any experienced law enforcement professional will understand that initial information coming from the scene of a major incident is usually flawed, so you have to sort of take it with a grain of salt,” said John Cohen, an ABC News contributor who served as acting DHS undersecretary for intelligence and analysis under the Biden administration.

During Thursday’s appearance on Fox News, Noem said, “We will continue to follow the investigation that the FBI is leading and give them all the information that they need to bring that to conclusion and make sure the American people know the truth of the situation,” she said.

After announcing on Friday that the Justice Department opened a civil rights investigation into the shooting Pretti, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters that “a single video should not determine an entire investigation.”

“We have said repeatedly over the past week that of course this is something that we are investigating and that is what we would always do in circumstances like this,” Blanche said. 

Earlier shootings: Renee Good, Marimar Martinez
Following the shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, DHS issued a statement within two hours declaring that a “violent rioter” had “weaponized her vehicle” in an “act of domestic terrorism.” According to an ABC News analysis of verified video, Good can be seen turning her steering wheel to the right — away from the ICE agent — just over one second before the first of three gunshots was fired.

In October, less than four hours after Marimar Martinez was shot five times by a Border Patrol agent in Chicago, a DHS assistant secretary posted that law enforcement was “forced” to fire defensive shots. A DHS statement that day labeled Martinez and another individual “domestic terrorists,” while Noem later characterized the incident as a “ten-car caravan” that “ambushed” and “stalked” agents.

During court hearings, an attorney representing Martinez told the court that body-worn camera footage did not align with the government’s allegations. A federal judge later dismissed the indictment against Martinez after the Department of Justice abruptly filed a motion to withdraw the case.

That same month, in an incident in California, DHS issued a statement claiming that during a vehicle stop, an “unknown individual” attempted to “run officers over by reversing directly at them without stopping.” The statement asserted that an ICE officer, “fearing for his life, fired defensive shots.”

However, a lawyer for Carlos Jimenez told ABC News that after an agent pulled out pepper spray, Jimenez began to maneuver his vehicle “to get around” and was shot in his back shoulder through the back passenger window.

Chicago shooting
In another incident in September, an ICE officer shot and killed Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez outside Chicago. According to a lawsuit filed by the state of Illinois, Villegas-Gonzalez, a 38-year-old father, was driving home from dropping his three-year-old son at day care. A DHS statement issued hours after the shooting claimed an officer “fearing for his life” was “seriously injured.”

But the Illinois complaint and body camera video obtained by ABC owned station WLS-TV revealed the agent who fired the weapon described his own injuries as “nothing major.”

“Videos of the incident did not corroborate DHS’s assertion that the shooting officer was ‘seriously injured’ by a ‘criminal illegal alien,'” the lawsuit states.

Cohen, the former DHS official, noted that describing incidents as domestic terrorism before an investigation is complete could later be viewed in court as prejudicial.

“When you make commentary on these types of incidents to advance an ideological or political narrative or objective, you run the risk of putting out inaccurate information and as a result, losing the public’s confidence,” Cohen said.

Sandweg, the former ICE official, told ABC News the only responsible approach for officials is to remain restrained in their public statements until there is reliable information.

“The only approach is … ‘We’re aware, we are conducting a full investigation,'” Sandweg said. “Public trust … is everything to these agencies. Once you destroy that, it bleeds over into everything else they do.”

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(WASHINGTON) — In the hours after FBI agents seized 2020 election ballots from an elections facility in Georgia on Wednesday, President Donald Trump posted a series of thoroughly discredited conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election — and the 2016 election too. 

Fulton County officials said Wednesday that the FBI seized original 2020 voting records while serving a search warrant at the county’s Elections Hub and Operations Center. The FBI said they were conducting court-authorized activity at the facility, but said they would provide no further information.

Late Wednesday night, the president reposted to his social media platform a claim that Italian military satellites had been used to hack into U.S. voting machines to flip votes from Trump to Joe Biden.  

“China reportedly coordinated the whole operation,” the post reads. “The CIA oversaw it, the FBI covered it up, all to install Biden as a puppet.”

That was just one of a flurry of posts and reposts by Trump making discredited claims about the 2020 election, directly tying the allegations to the FBI’s seizure of ballots on Wednesday.  

“This is only the beginning,” Trump said, reposting other posts about the FBI’s action in Georgia. “Prosecutions are coming.”

The development comes after Trump has repeatedly made baseless claims that there was voter fraud in the 2020 election, specifically in Georgia, that contributed to his election loss. Georgia officials audited and certified the results following the election, and numerous lawsuits challenging the election results in the state were rejected by the courts.

Among the statements posted and reposted by Trump following the FBI’s actions in Georgia is one on the 2016 election that falsely claims that “Barack Hussein Obama” falsified intelligence and “conspired with foreign powers, not one, not two, not three, but four times to overthrow the United States government in 2016.”

In addition to being baseless, the claim ignores the fact that Obama was president in 2016, so if he tried to overthrow the government, he would have been overthrowing himself. 

The conspiracy theory about Italian military satellites is not new. In 2021, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows directed both the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense to look into the matter.

As documented in my 2021 book, “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show,” the conspiracy theory was brought to the White House by a woman who went by several aliases including “The Heiress” and was known at the Pentagon for her claimed ties to Somali pirates. She passed her material off to a national security council official at a supermarket parking lot in Arlington. 

The Italian spy satellite theory was just one of many unsubstantiated allegations made about the 2020 election by Trump and his supporters. At a Trump campaign press conference in November 2020, lawyer Sydney Powell infamously claimed that voting machines had been rigged using software that was “created at the direction of Hugo Chavez.” This was an especially extravagant claim because Chavez, the former leader of Venezuela, had died three years earlier. 

In 2023, Powell pleaded guilty to state charges of conspiracy to commit “intentional interference with performance of election duties” in Georgia and agreed to serve six years of probation and to pay a $6,000 fine.  

And now it appears that Sidney Powell is back. In a post on X Thursday morning, DOJ official Ed Martin posted a picture of himself with Powell, writing, “Good morning, America. How are ya’?”

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(CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas) — A Robb Elementary School teaching aide testified that she repeatedly urged Uvalde, Texas, school police officer Adrian Gonzales to intervene in the shooting, but said he did “nothing” in those crucial moments. 

Melodye Flores testified on Wednesday that she saw gunman Salvador Ramos before he entered the school and tried to tell Gonzales his location. 

“I told him that he needed to get stopped before he went into the fourth-grade building,” she testified. 

“And what did he say?” prosecutor Bill Turner asked.  

“He, just, nothing,” Flores said. 

“Did you say it more than once?” Turner asked. 

“I did,” Flores said, telling jurors she urged Gonzales to intervene two or three times. 

Prosecutors allege Gonzales, who is charged with child endangerment, did not follow his training and endangered the 19 students who died and an additional 10 surviving students.

Gonzales, no longer an officer, has pleaded not guilty and his lawyers argue he is being unfairly blamed for a broader law-enforcement failure that day. It took 77 minutes before law enforcement mounted a counterassault to end the May 24, 2022, rampage.

Flores testified that she was eating lunch in her classroom when she learned about the shooter over a school radio. She said she ran outside because she knew that some students were on the playground and potentially in danger. 

After warning some students, Flores said she spotted the gunman near the south door of the school. 

“He was wearing all black and a hoodie … that’s when he started shooting,” she said.

Flores said she started running away and tripped, and incorrectly thought she was shot. 

She testified that she saw Gonzales drive up to her right after she tripped, and she tried to inform the officer about the shooter’s location. 

“I said that he was heading into the fourth-grade building, and we needed to stop him. We needed to go in and stop him before he went in,” she said. 

“I just kept pointing. ‘He’s going in there, he’s going to the fourth-grade building,'” she told jurors.

“Did you hear anything from this gunman while you were talking to the police officer?” Turner asked. 

“Just kept hearing shots,” she said. 

Flores said that Gonzales did not respond to her warnings.

“I kept telling him that he needed to be stopped,” she said.

“When you told the officer to go in, did he go in?” Turner asked. 

“No,” she said. 

“What did he do?” Turner asked. 

“He just stayed there,” she said. 

Flores said she left Gonzales and tried to help a teacher who had sheltered in her classroom.

On Tuesday, during the testimony of Texas Ranger Ricardo Guajardo, prosecutors played a lengthy interview Gonzales gave to state investigators after the shooting.

In the interview, Gonzales recalled arriving at the school as one of the first officers and learning about the shooting from a coach. 

“I was going over there towards her,” he said. “I see her fall in the dust cloud. So I get to her, and I realized she’s one of the coaches.” 

According to Gonzales, he learned the approximate location and a basic description of the shooter from the coach, though the shooting began before he could act.

Gonzales told investigators that he could not see the shooter, but he tried to notify others over his radio. 

“I notify everybody on the radio, the best I could. And then, you know, as soon as I start walking over there, I see the rounds come out of the window,” he said. 

Gonzales also described trying to enter the school with four other officers, though they retreated after two were hit by gunfire. 

“Everybody flew back, you know, so I think he got hit,” he said. “We kind of moved back.” 

Two months before the shooting, Gonzales taught a course about responding to active shooters, according to testimony from Teresa Zamarripa, the officer manager at Southwest Texas College Law Enforcement Agency.

ABC News’ Juan Renteria contributed to this report.

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