Alex Pretti Spent 11 Years Caring for Veterans. Federal Agents Killed Him.

Before Alex Pretti became a national symbol, he was a nurse who held veterans’ hands when they were dying. For 11 years, he worked at the Minneapolis VA Health Care System. He started as a research assistant in 2014, then put himself through nursing school at the University of Minnesota while still working at the hospital. After graduating and earning his nursing license in 2021, he returned to the VA as an ICU nurse caring for the sickest patients in the building.

His colleagues described him the way you’d want someone to describe the person taking care of your parent. Dr. Aasma Shaukat, who hired him as a research assistant, told NBC News he “always stepped up and looked for opportunities to help.” She wrote him a letter of support when he applied to nursing school. Dr. Dimitri Drekonja, the hospital’s chief of infectious diseases, called him “a good, kind person who lived to help.” They bonded over mountain biking.

But it was one of Pretti’s last patients who captured what kind of nurse he really was. Marta Crownheart, a veteran treated in the ICU, told CBS Minnesota that Pretti sat in her room for more than 20 minutes holding her hand during a bad day. “He treated me like I was his only patient,” she said. “And I knew I wasn’t, and he treated every vet like they were his only patient.”

In 2024, Air Force veteran Terrence Lee Randolph died at the Minneapolis VA at the age of 71. Pretti was his ICU nurse. After Randolph passed, Pretti stood beside the gurney, dressed in scrubs, and delivered a final salute on behalf of the hospital staff.

“Today we remember that freedom is not free,” Pretti said in a video recorded by Randolph’s son Mac. “We have to work at it, nurture it, protect it and even sacrifice for it.”

Mac Randolph shared the video publicly after Pretti was killed. “He was my dad’s ICU nurse. He read my dad’s final salute at the VA after he passed away,” Randolph wrote on Facebook. “Never wanted to share this video, but his speech is very on point.”

That video went viral. Millions of people watched a gentle man in scrubs honor a dead veteran with words about sacrifice. Then they learned federal agents had killed him.

Pretti was shot just before 9 a.m. near the intersection of 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis. According to multiple bystander videos verified by Reuters, the BBC, the Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press, Pretti was filming federal agents on his phone and helping direct traffic. At one point, he stepped between an agent and a woman whom the agent had pushed to the ground, putting his arm around her.

Federal agents then pepper-sprayed Pretti and wrestled him to the ground. Roughly six agents surrounded him. Bystander video appears to show an agent removing a gun from Pretti’s waistband and moving away from him approximately one second before another agent fired the fatal shots.

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara confirmed that Pretti was a legal gun owner with a Minnesota concealed carry permit and had no criminal record. He was not a veteran, but he was a federal employee and AFGE union member who had spent more than a decade serving veterans.

Within hours of the shooting, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem alleged Pretti had “approached” agents with a gun and “violently resisted.” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called Pretti a “would-be assassin” and a “domestic terrorist.” Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino told CNN that the agents were “the victims” and that Pretti “perpetrated violence.”

None of these characterizations held up. Bystander videos showed Pretti holding his phone, not his gun, when agents confronted him. No verified evidence has emerged of Pretti brandishing his firearm at any point during the encounter. His family released a statement calling the administration’s claims “sickening lies.”

Then came VA Secretary Doug Collins’s statement. Collins confirmed Pretti was a VA nurse and offered condolences. But he pivoted quickly, blaming “state and local officials’ refusal to cooperate with the federal government” for the chaos in Minneapolis. He didn’t address the loss of one of his own employees. He didn’t mention the 11 years Pretti had spent caring for veterans in a VA hospital.

What made the Pretti case different from typical partisan flashpoints was the breadth of the backlash. Yes, Democrats condemned the shooting. But so did a growing number of Republicans. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina called DHS Secretary Noem “incompetent” and demanded she resign. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska called the killing “shocking” and questioned the “adequacy of immigration-enforcement training.” Sen. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, no one’s idea of a moderate, called it a “horrifying situation” and demanded a “prioritized, transparent investigation.”

Even Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who is facing a Trump-backed primary challenge, wrote on X that “the events in Minneapolis are incredibly disturbing.” Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas said he was “troubled by the events that have unfolded.”

Meanwhile, the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee chair, Republican Jerry Moran of Kansas, called for an “investigation to the fullest extent to ensure transparency and accountability.” House Veterans Affairs Committee ranking member Mark Takano (D-CA) issued a statement connecting Pretti’s work to the broader principle at stake. Pretti “served the brave men and women who fought to defend his rights and the rights of all Americans, including the rights to free speech and assembly,” Takano said. “What is happening across America is not normal and should not be accepted as such.”

Here is the contradiction that veteran Democrats can drive home in every race across the country: the same administration that killed a VA nurse is also gutting the VA workforce.

An internal DOGE memo leaked earlier this year revealed plans to eliminate roughly 80,000 VA employees, about 17% of the total workforce. Hundreds of VA contracts have been terminated, including contracts supporting the National Center for PTSD, cancer treatment registries, and nursing services. ProPublica reported that DOGE built an error-prone AI tool to flag VA contracts for termination. The tool hallucinated contract values and flagged essential medical services as “munchable.”

Pretti was exactly the kind of person the VA can’t afford to lose. An ICU nurse who put himself through school while working at the hospital, who stayed for over a decade, who cared for the most vulnerable patients. The VA is already facing severe staffing shortages. And now one of its own was shot dead in the street by federal agents operating under the same administration that’s hollowing out veteran care from the inside.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, the retired Army National Guard lieutenant colonel from Illinois, drew the connection explicitly. She voted against the DHS funding package, saying Pretti “was publicly executed while trying to protect a woman from being assaulted.” In the same period, Duckworth pressed VA Secretary Collins on his plans to restructure the Veterans Health Administration during ongoing staffing shortages caused by DOGE-driven cuts.

As we covered in our analysis of veteran Democrats applying combat standards to ICE tactics, multiple combat veterans in Congress used their military authority to condemn federal agents’ behavior. Rep. Seth Moulton, a Marine who served four tours in Iraq, called agents “absolute, pathetic, untrained, unprofessional cowards” and traveled to Minneapolis to meet with organizers. Sen. Ruben Gallego, a Marine who served in Iraq, pointed to specific weapons-handling failures that wouldn’t pass basic training.

But the Pretti killing added a new dimension to their argument. The issue went beyond federal agents operating without military discipline. The government killed someone who was doing what the government itself should be doing: taking care of veterans.

The National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association put out a statement underscoring a point that matters for every veteran-adjacent race in the country: “Federal employees like Pretti retain their constitutional rights as private citizens to observe and protest their government when off duty, within the confines of the law.” The American Association of Critical Care Nurses, the Oregon Nurses Association, and AFGE all issued statements mourning the loss and connecting it to a broader pattern of federal overreach.

Trump’s approval sits at 41% in the Cook Political Report’s aggregated tracker, with a net rating of -15.3. Pew Research found approval at just 37% in a late January survey. Among independents, the drop is even sharper: a net decline of 23.7 points since March 2025. Among young voters, the decline is 24.5 points. Among Latinos, 16 points. These are the exact demographics where veteran Democrats outperform other candidates.

In Maine, Marine and Army veteran Graham Platner is running against Susan Collins with $3.7 million in cash on hand. He spoke at an anti-ICE rally outside Collins’s Portland office in January. In Arizona, Navy and Marine veteran JoAnna Mendoza is challenging Rep. Juan Ciscomani in a district where Kamala Harris lost by just a single point. In Virginia, Navy Commander Elaine Luria is mounting her comeback in VA-02.

For all of these candidates, the Pretti story gives them a devastating line of attack that connects personal sacrifice to policy failure. The administration killed a man who cared for veterans while cutting the very programs that keep veterans alive. That’s not a talking point. It’s a fact.

There’s something worth sitting with in the final salute video. Pretti stands beside a dead veteran, surrounded by hospital staff, and says the words that every VA worker is taught to say but few deliver with that kind of sincerity. Freedom is not free. We have to work at it, protect it, and sacrifice for it.

He wasn’t a veteran himself. He was something the veteran community needs just as badly: a person who chose, every day for 11 years, to take care of the people who served. In the ICU, where the patients are the sickest and the work is the hardest, Pretti showed up and held people’s hands.

The administration that employs the agents who killed him is the same one cutting 80,000 jobs at the agency where he worked. Veteran Democrats running in 2026 should say that plainly, clearly, and often. Because the voters who care about veterans, about constitutional rights, and about basic accountability are already paying attention.