Renee Good, the woman shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, is being remembered by a childhood friend as someone who made others feel secure and accepted.
Good’s friend, Megan Shirley, says Good was the kind of person you could fully relax around.
“[Good] was one of those people, genuinely, you could be yourself around and she would keep your secrets and you could trust her,” Shirley says. “And when I think about her, I really just remember feeling like she was a safe friend for me.”
Shirley, who went to elementary and middle school with Good, 37, remembers the two spending time writing and singing songs together. At one point, they even started a band called Ivy.
“She was really good with words,” Shirley says, adding that she wasn’t surprised to later learn Good had won a poetry award. “Because she was doing it even back then.”
Good was a mother of three who had recently moved to the Twin Cities with her wife not long before her death.
In the days since the shooting, multiple videos have circulated showing the fatal encounter and Good’s interaction with ICE agents shortly beforehand.
According to reports, Good was shot by an agent later identified as Jonathan Ross as she was maneuvering her Honda Pilot. After the shots were fired, her vehicle continued moving up the street, away from the agents, before crashing into a parked car.
In the immediate aftermath, the Department of Homeland Security said Good had “weaponized her vehicle” and claimed the agent acted in self-defense.
However, videos of the incident have prompted many to question that description. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called the federal agency’s claim “bulls—.”
Shirley says she was stunned when she learned her friend had been killed, and she does not believe Good was trying to hurt anyone with her car.
“There’s no way,” she says. “I really think it was fight or flight type of situation where she was in fight or flight mode and she kind of took off. And I don’t think that it would’ve been on purpose for trying to hurt anyone with her car.”
For Shirley, the aftermath has felt unreal—especially seeing someone she knew as a kid appear in national headlines.
“She didn’t deserve what happened to her,” she says. “And she would’ve brought a lot of good into the world if she was allowed to be here a little bit longer.”
