A private autopsy has determined that Renee Good, the unarmed US citizen and mother killed by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis earlier this month, was shot three times, in her forearm, breast and head.
The independent postmortem was commissioned by lawyers in Chicago representing Good’s family, and its findings were released late on Wednesday, ABC7 News reported.
The autopsy, described as preliminary, found three clear gunshot wounds on the 37-year-old’s body, two of which were not immediately life-threatening. One struck her left forearm, and another entered her body through her right breast, but missed major organs.
A third shot struck her on the left side of her head near her temple then exited on the right side of her head, the New York Times reported. The newspaper said there was also a graze wound “consistent with a firearm injury, but with no penetration”.
The Good family’s attorneys, Romanucci and Blandin, declined to release the full report, but said it would continue “to gather evidence” in connection with her death as it pursued what it said was a civil investigation, the Times said.
The findings align with incident reports, including transcripts of 911 calls, into the 7 January shooting, which chronicled two “apparent gunshot wounds” to the right side of Good’s chest, and a “possible gunshot wound with protruding tissue on the left side of the patient’s head”.
The death of Good, who relatives said was acting as a legal observer of a surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity in Minneapolis, has raised tensions in the Minnesota city and sparked a fight between the Trump administration and local officials.
The White House and the Department of Homeland Security have repeatedly insisted that Good was a “domestic terrorist” who aimed her car at the ICE agent. The officer was forced to fire in self-defense, they claimed.
Multiple video clips of the encounter, however, show that Good was steering away from the agent as she tried to drive away, and at least two of the shots were fired from the side of the vehicle. State officials are angry that they have been cut out of an FBI inquiry, and that federal authorities are looking into Good’s widow and Democratic leaders in Minnesota, including the governor, Tim Walz, and the Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey, and not the officer who killed Good, Jonathan Ross.
Separately, the justice department has said available video evidence “cleared” Ross, and that no criminal investigation was taking place.
“The Department of Justice doesn’t just stand up and investigate because some congressman thinks we should, because some governor thinks that we should,” Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, told Fox News on Sunday.
The lack of an investigation led a wave of federal prosecutors to quit in protest. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has amplified its blaming of the victim, and support for an escalation of immigration enforcement activities, which have led to sometimes violent skirmishes with protesters and the arrests of US citizens and children.
On Thursday, the vice-president, JD Vance, is expected in Minneapolis and will speak in defense of Donald Trump’s decision to send 3,000 federal law enforcement officers to the area.
