Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old ICU nurse who was shot and killed by federal officers in Minneapolis, is being remembered by a former high school friend as someone who wasn’t violent and didn’t seek conflict.
After Pretti was fatally shot by U.S. Border Patrol officers on Saturday, Jan. 24, Rory Shefchek — who knew him as a teenager — said the news has been hard to process.
“It’s just so crazy to see this,” Shefchek says. “I’ve been following everything going on, and I’m not really a political person, I’m gonna be honest with you, but when you see somebody you know, [it hurts].”
Shefchek describes Pretti as “a good dude,” adding, “He was always a really nice guy.”
Pretti and Shefchek attended Preble High School in Wisconsin and graduated together in 2006. Looking back on those years, Shefchek says Pretti was active, involved, and easy to like.
“He was involved in a lot of extracurriculars and stuff, and I just always thought he was a great dude,” he says. “He was funny. He was very talented.”
“We did choir and solo ensemble together,” Shefchek continues. “He played football too. I mean, he was just your average all-American guy. He got along with everybody.”
“I met him, and I immediately thought he was just somebody you could just talk to right away,” Shefchek adds, describing him as “a warm and welcoming kind of person.”
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According to a statement from Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Pretti “approached” U.S. Border Patrol officers while armed with a handgun and “violently resisted” as they tried to disarm him on Jan. 24. McLaughlin said an agent then fired “defensive shots.”
Soon after, at least 200 protesters arrived near the scene, leading to confrontations between federal law enforcement and local residents, The Associated Press reported.
Speaking at a press conference following the shooting, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said that, to his knowledge, Pretti’s only prior interactions with law enforcement involved parking tickets. O’Hara also said Pretti was a lawful gun owner with a permit.
Shefchek says he and Pretti went to different colleges after high school but stayed connected through social media. When the news broke on Jan. 24, Shefchek says he immediately began messaging others who knew Pretti.
“The first thing I did was reach out to some other classmates and my family, and I was like, ‘This is crazy,’” he says. “Everybody’s posting pictures of him, and we’re just all like, ‘How could this happen to somebody like that?’”
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To Shefchek, what makes the situation especially v is that Pretti didn’t fit the image of someone looking for confrontation.
“This seems really odd,” he says. “It’s not like [he was] somebody who was an agitator … or somebody who was controversial.”
He adds: “I hope people don’t think this is a guy that was out there trying to pick a fight with law enforcement. I really don’t think that’s the case. That’d be so out of character. This is a guy that should be remembered as a happy-go-lucky, nice guy.”
Shefchek says the loss has left him angry — and also shaken by how close to home it feels.
“It’s easy to detach yourself when it’s not people you know,” he says. “So it’s really weird to hear somebody from your little small town of a hundred thousand people is literally dead.”
