How to get yourself killed

Alex Pretti and Renee Good at least contributed to their own demise. Did they have it coming? That's up for debate. But completely unexpected? I think not. Martyrdom sometimes works.

Gemini 3.0 (w/ Nano Banana Pro)

Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both recently deceased through encounters with ICE agents in Minneapolis, should not be dead. I don’t like seeing anyone dead before their time. But martyrdom has drawbacks. Neither Good nor Pretti shed their mortal coils through unlikely or inexplicable circumstances. Both were generally competent adults who allowed emotion to overrule better judgment—and that’s what got them killed.

We will, in the fullness of time, determine exactly who bears the bulk of the legal responsibility for Good and Pretti’s deaths. But in the meantime I’m going to state what ought to be obvious (but is unfortunately not). At the very least, Good and Pretti went looking for unnecessary and dangerous trouble—and they found it. Both recklessly ventured, at a minimum, well into the gray area that separates legal, constitutionally protected protest from unlawful interference with legitimate law enforcement that merits a response.

Though Pretti and Good’s fates are in some ways dissimilar, their paths converged in gunshots and death. What happens now makes no difference to either of them since they are dead, but it makes a big difference to the rest of us who are not. This should be a cautionary tale: Sometimes martyrdom works. Be careful what you wish for.

I am a proponent of concealed carry and an EDC kind of guy. But I don’t carry everywhere, including places where I have every right to. I don’t carry multiple extended clips either, even though I have the right to those as well. “Right” isn’t a bulletproof vest. The fact that something is legal often doesn’t even come close to making it a great idea. Jumping off a cliff is perfectly legal; it’s also lousy for your prospects of dying of natural causes (unless you agree with the occasional defense claim that gravity is a natural cause).

Good, a 37-year-old mother, left behind three children, at least one of whom is now an orphan (despite initial claims to the contrary, Renee Good was not married to her domestic partner, Becca Good). Her children are without a mom because Good used her SUV to block a street in order to interfere with an ongoing, legal ICE operation, ignoring multiple commands to cease, desist, and leave the area. Ultimately, she struck an ICE agent with her SUV. That agent then fired into the vehicle, killing her. Good’s death seems unnecessary, but not beyond the realm of justifiable.

Pretti, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and intensive care nurse in the Minneapolis VA Health Care System, was thrown to the ground and shot multiple times by federal immigration agents about two weeks after Good’s death as he tried to help a woman ICE agents had taken to the ground for reasons unknown. Pretti, according to his friends, was a non-political person inspired to protest as the result of Ms. Good’s death. His death seemed much more unreasonable.

But the initial narrative concerning Pretti proved false. A subsequent video released by The News Movement and confirmed by the BBC shows Pretti confronting ICE officers in Minneapolis 11 days earlier. Pretti kicks and damages the taillight of an ICE SUV in the video. As federal agents emerge to confront him, he spits, shouts "fuck you" several times, and flashes middle fingers with both hands. As he’s taken to the ground, a gun may be clearly seen in his waistband—the same gun that would be removed from him eleven days later in his second, this time fatal, encounter with ICE.

As is my practice when debates over constitutional rights arise, I favor a plain reading of the part of the constitution in play. In this instance, the First Amendment (emphasis, mine).

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

There is nothing peaceable about the protests against ICE in Minneapolis, which are designed specifically to interfere with lawful operations and to provoke confrontation with federal law enforcement agents. The intent is to incite violent responses from federal agents, which may then be videoed and distributed to further a narrative.

Good and Pretti were encouraged by elected officials, including Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, as well as an entire ecosystem of progressive activists, to engage federal officials as Nazi interlopers with no legitimate business in Minnesota. This is, of course, false.

One wonders how much these elected officials, who, despite encouraging others to confront federal officers while confining their own protests to the safety of press conferences, are motivated by getting the very unsavory and politically damaging Minnesota Somali fraud story out of the headlines, replacing it with something much more convenient for them.

Wait—politicians and activists using others for their own gain? Say it ain’t so.

Along that line, I am also struck by the number of people on the left who continue to press the point that more than anything else, Pretti was a nurse—as if being a healthcare provider makes you somehow less deserving of death than others. This is especially striking given the complete absence of upset from the same quarters over the death of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was brutally attacked and murdered while she was jogging at the University of Georgia nearly two years ago by an illegal immigrant.

Apparently being murdered by an illegal immigrant negates the moral superiority of being a healthcare worker when judging the egregiousness of being killed. If your murder runs afoul of fever dreams concerning social justice, you are evidently just an unfortunate, unlikely statistic who shouldn’t be engaged in body shaming by jogging in the first place.

There exists a large gray area between one’s right to peacefully assemble and protest and behavior that crosses the line into what is not constitutionally protected and is illegal and dangerous to one’s health. I know that would-be martyrs feel that they must cross this no man’s land in order to assert their virtue over the rest of us, but that strikes me as both an abdication of personal responsibility and really tempting fate.

Kids? That’s what the foster care system is for.

I have plenty of things in the world that piss me off, too. But personally, I like to get back home to the Groms each night. That’s why you are not going to catch me sitting down in front of traffic, attaching large flags on the sides of buildings or trying to provoke federal law enforcement while carrying a firearm and lots of ammo.

I would not even dream of yelling at, spitting at or confronting a law-enforcement officer, for any reason, with my car or while strapped simply because I don’t want my future well-being to depend solely on what kind of day they are having. I don’t trust anyone that much. Besides, I can get my point across with my pen and a voting booth and contribute to the likelihood that I’m around long enough to make sure that my youngest doesn’t marry an asshole.

If either Pretti or Good had valued self-preservation and their families and friends above virtue through martyrdom, they’d still be around to raise hell and fix dinner. A few kids would still have a mom and Minnesotans would have one more nurse in their healthcare system.

That’s the problem with looking for a fight—sometimes you find one. Unfortunately for these two, they got what they were looking for. Just more of it than they expected.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, climber, skier, motorcyclist, musician, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time raising four kids. Follow him on X at @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com.