New details have emerged about the fatal shooting of a 37-year-old mother in Minnesota, including the identity of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent responsible.
Local media named Jonathan Ross as the agent who killed Renee Nicole Good. Officials say that he was dragged and injured by a fleeing driver during a separate incident last year.
The fatal shooting occurred on a street in Minneapolis on Wednesday morning, where numerous immigration officers were present amid a surge of federal agents in the city, according to the City of Minneapolis.
Video of the incident shows Ross confronting Good in her car before firing several shots into the vehicle as it started to move.
However, the incident has sparked sharply conflicting accounts of the incident from local, state, and federal officials, including Vice President JD Vance, who said that Good’s death was “a tragedy of her own making.”
“She was trying to ram this guy with her car,” Vance said at a White House briefing Thursday.
Other officials from the Trump administration described the shooting as an act of self-defense and alleged that the victim had engaged in “domestic terrorism.” In contrast, the Minneapolis mayor condemned Ross’s actions as reckless and called on federal immigration authorities to withdraw from the city.
Here is what we know so far.
Who was the shooter?
The ICE agent involved in the shooting was identified on Thursday by The Minnesota Star Tribune as Jonathan Ross.
Little information about Ross was made public, though he was described as an “experienced” officer by federal officials.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said that Ross’s experience included more than 10 years of experience as an ICE Deportation Officer and selection for ICE’s Special Response Team, which requires 30 hours of tryouts before consideration.
He has also reportedly completed an SRT Basic Operator Course as well as continuous and ongoing training in several specialized skills, including breaching techniques, perimeter control, advanced firearms training, hostage rescue, and more.
He has also maintained an expert marksman qualification on all issued firearms, according to McLaughlin.
According to The Star Tribune, in June last year, Ross was dragged and injured by a car as he attempted to detain Roberto Carlos Munoz-Guatemala, a Mexican man with a criminal record, while he was driving in Bloomington.
When Munoz-Guatemala didn’t comply with orders from agents, Ross broke the car’s rear window and tried to unlock the door. Munoz-Guatemala then accelerated, dragging Ross roughly 300 feet before he was “knocked” from the car.
As a result of the incident, Ross needed 20 stitches on his arm and 13 more on his hand, according to court documents seen by the outlet. Munoz-Guatemala was later convicted of assaulting an officer
Who was the person killed?
Good’s mother, Donna Ganger, confirmed her daughter’s identity to the Star Tribune just hours after the shooting. Members of the Minneapolis City Council also confirmed her identity in a statement on Wednesday evening.
“Renee was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. She was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being,” Ganger told the Star Tribune.
Ganger said her daughter lived in the Twin Cities with her wife, Becca Good. She said it was “so stupid.” Good was killed, adding that “she was probably terrified,” according to the Star Tribune.
Good had a son with her former husband, Timmy Ray Macklin Jr., according to the Star Tribune. Macklin died in 2023. Macklin’s father, Timmy Ray Macklin Sr., told the outlet the six-year-old boy now has “nobody else in his life.”
“I’ll drive. I’ll fly. To come and get my grandchild,” he said.
In a separate interview with The Daily Telegraph, Good’s former father-in-law described the shooting as “murder.”
“It is horrible, it’s murder. Everybody is terribly shocked right now. She was a good, outgoing person. I didn’t agree with a lot of her ways, but it’s really sad to see these things happen,” he said.
Minneapolis City Council member Jason Chavez previously confirmed to ABC News that Good was an American citizen. He also said she was acting as “an observer” who was “watching out for our immigrant neighbors.” Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara said that there was no indication she was the subject of an immigration enforcement investigation.
He noted that she appeared to be in her car, blocking the street.
What happened?
The deadly shooting took place at 34th Street and Portland Avenue, an intersection in a residential neighborhood, according to the City of Minneapolis.
A video of the incident shared with local media shows multiple masked officers approaching a red car stopped in the middle of the icy road.
An officer can be heard instructing the driver to “get out of the f***ing car” before one officer tries to open the door as the vehicle begins reversing. A second officer, positioned in front of the car, then draws his weapon and fires several shots as the car speeds forward and to the right. The vehicle then crashes a short distance away.
The officer appeared to have fired one shot through the windscreen and then two more into the open window on the driver’s side of the car.
As people scream and shout at the immigration officials, several people are seen walking towards the car.
Photos shared on social media appear to show an airbag splattered with blood inside the crashed vehicle.
Several police officers responded to the scene and helped transport Good to a hospital, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said in a press conference. But she was pronounced dead.
A witness told NBC News that it didn’t appear the driver was attempting to run over an agent.
“There was plenty of space between the officers at that point for the vehicle to make it through,” he told the outlet, adding that it appeared the driver was attempting to flee.
Reactions from officials
At around 3:30 p.m., President Donald Trump weighed in. In a post on Truth Social, he accused the “Radical Left” of mounting an assault on law enforcement professionals.
He said he had watched a video of the incident, adding, “It is a horrible thing to watch.”
Of the shooting victim, the president wrote that “the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense.” Videos of the incident do not clearly indicate whether the officer was touched by the car, although he appears to jump out of the way of the vehicle while shooting.
He said the officer involved was now “recovering in the hospital” and that it is “hard to believe he is alive,” despite video showing him walking around apparently unhurt in the wake of the shooting.
In an interview with The New York Times, Trump presented blurry footage to reporters that had been promoted online by right-wing influencers such as Benny Johnson and Andy NGo. “She behaved horribly. And then she ran him over. She didn’t try to run him over,” he said.
However, the president also lamented the situation as a “terrible scene,” saying: “I think it’s horrible to watch. No, I hate to see it.”
At a White House press briefing Thursday, Vance said Good had “violated the law” and committed an act of “terrorism.”
“The way that the media, by and large, has reported this story has been an absolute disgrace, and it puts our law enforcement officers at risk every single day,” he said. “[Ross] shot back. He defended himself.
“He's already been seriously wounded in law enforcement operations before, and everybody who has been repeating the lie that this is some innocent woman who was out for a drive in Minneapolis when a law enforcement officer shot at her. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), also previously described the shooting as defensive in nature.
“Today, ICE officers in Minneapolis were conducting targeted operations when rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them — an act of domestic terrorism,” she said in a statement.
“An ICE officer, fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots,” McLaughlin added. “He used his training and saved his own life and that of his fellow officers.”
She characterized the shooting as a consequence of the “demonization of our officers.”
In a press conference on Wednesday afternoon, Mayor Frey offered a strikingly different account of what happened.
“They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense,” Frey, a Democrat, told reporters. “Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody directly: that is bulls***. This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying.”
“We’ve dreaded this moment since the early stages of ICE’s presence in Minneapolis,” Frey added. “They are not here to cause safety in this city… what they are doing is causing chaos and distrust.”
In a press conference later in the afternoon, Governor Tim Walz echoed this sentiment, expressing outrage at the White House.
“We’ve been warning for weeks that the Trump administration’s dangerous, sensationalized operations are a threat to our safety and that someone was going to get hurt,” Walz, a Democrat, said. “We do not need any further help from the federal government .”
He then asked that protesters refrain from violence, stating, “They want a show. We can’t give it to them.”
Several other elected officials quickly reacted to the deadly incident, with many Democrats condemning ICE.
“I’m following news of a reported shooting of a legal observer by ICE agents in South Minneapolis,” Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar wrote in a post on X. “ICE must stop terrorizing our communities and leave our city.”
“This is not the first time Trump’s ICE has shot at civilians,” Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal wrote in a post. “We need ICE out of our cities and communities.”
Minnesota Senator Tina Smith confirmed that the woman killed was an American citizen and urged ICE to leave “for everyone’s safety.”
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller described the incident as “domestic terrorism.”
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem echoed this view, telling Fox News, “It was an act of domestic terrorism. ICE Officers got stuck in the snow. They were attempting to push out their vehicle, and a woman attacked them, and those surrounding them, and attempted to run them over.”
At a Wednesday evening press conference, Noem went on to claim Good had been “stalking and impeding” federal officials’ work throughout the day. Noem again described her actions as an “act of domestic terrorism” at the press conference.
Large crowd assembled at shooting site
Following the ICE shooting on Wednesday, a large crowd of people assembled on the street where it occurred, video showed.
People bundled in winter coats stood in the street, on the sidewalk and in the snow near an area cordoned off with police tape. At one point, they broke into chants directed at law enforcement officials.
Footage from Fox News also shows onlookers throwing snowballs at law enforcement personnel and giving them the middle finger.
“People are very, very angry,” a CNN reporter at the scene said.
The fatal shooting took place just a few blocks away from where George Floyd was killed in May 2020, an event that ignited nationwide protests.
Influx of federal agents
Good’s death comes shortly after the Trump administration announced it was deploying additional ICE agents to the Minneapolis area.
“While for the safety of our officers we do not get into law enforcement footprint, DHS has surged law enforcement and has already made more than 1,000 arrests of murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and gang members,” DHS told The Independent in an email on Tuesday.
The surge, which began this weekend, was expected to involve as many as 2,000 agents from multiple agencies, according to law enforcement sources.
The influx of federal agents comes amid an ongoing federal investigation into fraud in Minnesota’s social services programs, which culminated in Governor Tim Walz announcing on Monday that he would not seek reelection.
A large share of Minnesota residents are of Somali descent, many of whom have remained indoors for fear of being detained by ICE, according to NBC News.
Trump has repeatedly singled out Somalis for ridicule and has accused “Illegal Somalian Criminals” of stealing billions of dollars from Minnesota. Last month, he described immigrants from the East African nation as “garbage” and called for Rep. Omar, who is from Somalia, to be “thrown the hell out” of the U.S.
