A viral video from Minneapolis in the US state of Minnesota is circulating on social media.
It shows a confrontation that took place on January 7, in which an officer of the US immigration enforcement agency ICE shot a 37-year-old white American woman called Renee Nicole Good in her car. She was declared dead in hospital shortly afterward.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has shared another video of the incident, and presented the situation as follows: that the woman in the car ran the ICE officer over, and he seems to have shot her in self-defense.
The DW Fact check team has examined the claim.
Claim: “[…] 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. Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe he is alive […],” wrote Trump on his social media platform Truth Social.
He reposted a 13-second clip to support his claim. In it, we see a dark-colored SUV driving toward an officer. Trump’s post was also posted as a screencast on the White House Instagram account.
DW fact check: False
Trump’s claim that Renee Nicole Good ran over an ICE officer is false. The clip the US president shared was initially posted on the Instagram channel KSTP-TV 5 Eyewitness News.
Looking closely at the clip Trump shared — posted to his account in slow motion — one may indeed get the impression at the 5-second time stamp that the SUV has run the officer over, and that he starts shooting a moment later in response.
However, it is clear by the 8-second mark, at the latest, that the aforementioned ICE officer is standing upright and looking at the vehicle as it drives away.
Watching the clip at the original speed, it is evident that, although the SUV is moving, the ICE officer jumps back from it and is not run over.
This can be seen even more clearly when we observe the incident from a different perspective. This video, filmed by an eyewitness, was posted on X by the American journalist Max Nesterak. It shows the sequence of events more clearly than the video shared by Trump.
DW Fact check has examined this video frame by frame.
- At the start of the video, we see a stationary burgundy SUV, a Honda Pilot, positioned diagonally across the driving lanes of a snow-covered road. DW Fact check was able to identify the precise location: It is Portland Avenue in Minneapolis, approximately outside house number 3328.
- At 9 seconds in, we see two masked officers in uniform approach the Honda.
- At 12 seconds, one of the officers tries to open the door of the Honda. He does not succeed. The driver then starts to drive off. She reverses briefly, then starts to drive forward.
- At 14 seconds a third officer becomes visible. His face is only partly obscured, and he is standing in front of the vehicle with his gun drawn. Immediately afterward, he shoots three times directly at the driver.
- At 15 seconds we can see that the Honda is steering past the shooter. The front tires are turned to the right, away from the ICE officer. The shooter dodges the car as it starts to move off, remaining on his feet.
- At 21 seconds we see the SUV collide with a parked car and come to a stop. The shooter walks slowly toward the vehicle.
Trump’s claim that the ICE agent was “run over” is therefore demonstrably false. The shooter was not run over by the woman, and he was able to walk toward her crashed vehicle after firing the shots. This is also clearly apparent from our analysis of stills from the videos:
While Trump and the Department of Homeland Security are claiming that Renee Nicole Good was killed in self-defense, the city of Minneapolis has contradicted this.
The city’s Democrat mayor, Jacob Frey, has strongly condemned the ICE agents’ actions, and, having viewed the videos himself, categorically rejected the characterization of the killing as self-defense.
The mayor accused the federal agencies of escalating the situation. The incident is currently under investigation.
This article was originally written in German.
