Becca Good’s First Reactions After Witnessing Her Wife Fatally Shot by an ICE Agent

On a frigid morning in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, Renee Nicole Good, 37 — a mother of three and a well-known presence in her neighborhood — finished a routine task: dropping her 6-year-old son at school.

She and her wife, Becca, 40, were riding together in their maroon Honda Pilot along snow-slick streets when Becca suggested a detour. Federal agents were flooding parts of the city as a large ICE operation unfolded, and residents were already gathering to protest the heavy law-enforcement presence. Good agreed to go and support the crowd. She didn’t make it back home.

The encounter escalated in seconds. Witnesses say Jonathan Ross — an ICE officer who joined the agency in 2015 and was serving in 2025 as a firearms instructor and a member of the F.B.I.’s Joint Terrorism Task Force — shot Good while she was behind the wheel.

“I heard three pops of the gun,” witness Lynette Reini-Grandell said. “The people around me started screaming … ‘You killed her!’”

According to accounts from observers, an ICE agent tried to open the driver’s-side door and shouted, “Get out of the f–king car.” Good reversed the SUV, then began pulling forward. Ross fired through the windshield. The vehicle surged ahead, struck another car, and came to a stop on Portland Ave.

Paramedics arrived at 9:42 a.m. and found Good in the driver’s seat, unresponsive, with blood on her face and torso, according to 60 pages of 911 call transcripts and police and fire department incident reports. Witnesses said Becca was holding her, sobbing and covered in blood.

As SWAT team members moved in and ordered people back, a neighbor who asked not to be named recalled Becca screaming, “My wife!” Photos from the scene showed a blood-soaked airbag and stuffed animals in the glove compartment.

Records described two apparent gunshot wounds on the right side of Good’s chest, another on her left forearm, and a fourth on the left side of her head. Blood was reportedly flowing from her left ear, and her pupils were dilated.

Becca walked to a nearby yard and sat on the steps. A roommate asked a man identified as James — a former firefighter and first responder — if they could get a towel for her. Becca stood drenched and stunned, then began crying again and said, “There’s a dog in the back. Can someone get it for me, please?”

James described seeing the damage up close. “I saw the hole in the windshield. It looked chest level,” he said. Inside, he said, the scene was unmistakable.

“There was so much blood around the airbag. The white airbag was red. There was so much blood,” he said, adding that Good’s seat and body were covered in blood. “I could see the bullet hole through her left side. It was very, very gruesome.”

Calls to 911 began at 9:38 a.m. on Jan. 7, shortly after the shooting, as protesters and observers confronted federal agents. The calls continued for roughly an hour, with multiple witnesses reporting that a woman had been shot inside her vehicle.

“There’s 15 ICE agents, and they shot her, like, because she wouldn’t open her car door,” one caller said.

“I witnessed it,” another caller told an operator. Asked whether anyone had been hit, she answered, “Yes, bleeding.” She later added that the driver attempted to pull away but crashed into a nearby parked vehicle.

Other callers begged for help: “Send an ambulance please. Ambulance, please.”

After officers removed Good from the vehicle about 25 minutes later, she was not breathing and had an irregular pulse, according to police sources. A neighbor said Becca had already left for the hospital.

Resuscitation attempts were unsuccessful. Records said an ambulance began transporting Good toward the hospital, but the efforts were stopped after 10 a.m.

Ross remained at the scene after the shooting, then was taken to a federal building about 15 minutes later. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said on Jan. 14 that Ross was taken to the hospital that day and suffered internal bleeding in his torso, but declined to answer additional questions. A Minneapolis FBI representative said, “No further information is available for release at this time in accordance with DOJ policy.”

Ross has not been accused of a crime. Still, use-of-force experts have criticized the shooting. “In order to use deadly force, your life or someone else’s life must be in immediate danger,” said Chris Burbank, a former Salt Lake City police chief, who said he does not believe Good posed that kind of threat.

The investigation has drawn conflict from the start. Federal officials said the FBI would handle the inquiry and argued Minnesota authorities have no jurisdiction. In response, state Attorney General Keith Ellison called for “a fair, transparent investigation of all of the facts.”

Federal officials have described Good as a “domestic terrorist” who deliberately tried to harm ICE agents with her car. Her parents, Donna and Tim Ganger, along with Good’s siblings, disputed that characterization, saying she “was a beautiful light of our family and brought joy to anyone she met. She was relentlessly hopeful and optimistic which was contagious. We all already miss her more than words could ever express.”

In the days that followed, witnesses said Becca collapsed in grief on a neighbor’s steps. She was later reunited with the dog that had been in the backseat, holding him in stunned silence before being taken to the hospital.

“We stopped to support our neighbors,” Becca said in a statement on Jan. 9. “We had whistles. They had guns.”

As protests, vigils, and political fallout continued, Becca said she was left trying to rebuild life for their family — and to carry forward what Renee believed in.

“I am now left to raise our son and to continue teaching him, as Renee believed, that there are people building a better world for him.”