After federal agents killed an unarmed American citizen in broad daylight last week, high-ranking government officials rushed to defend the shooter, framed a mother’s attempt to escape an escalating confrontation as “domestic terrorism,” and blamed the victim for her own death. The killing of Renee Good is not just a failure of policing—the public response by those in power should alarm every American who believes that feeling afraid of armed agents and trying to drive away should not be a capital offense.
Recent Supreme Court precedent underscores why the shooting of Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross is not the clear-cut case of self-defense that administration officials are suggesting. Under the “totality of the circumstances” standard—established decades ago and reaffirmed recently—the chain of events matters. Viewed as a whole, the available footage raises serious doubts that it was reasonable for Ross to shoot Good in the head as she attempted to leave ICE agents who were trying to forcibly remove her from her vehicle.
What the videos show
Ross fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, a white mother of three, while she was in her SUV—apparently trying to exit a situation that was becoming increasingly hostile.
In cellphone video of the incident, two ICE agents exit a pickup truck and walk toward Good’s car. One appears to reach through the driver’s open window and attempts to open the door. Good slowly reverses, then turns to the right and moves forward at a slow pace, seemingly trying to pull away. At that moment, a third officer—standing in front of Good’s vehicle—draws his gun and, while shifting to the side, fires several shots into the car, striking Good in the head. The SUV continues forward and crashes into a parked vehicle. Good was pronounced dead shortly after.
Officials defended the shooting—and described Good as the aggressor
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem defended the agent who shot Good, saying, “This was an act of domestic terrorism. ICE officers got stuck in the snow and were attempting to push out their vehicle when a woman attacked them.” President Donald Trump also weighed in immediately after the killing, writing on Truth Social, “The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and 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.”
But none of the videos that have emerged show Good running over the agent or attacking agents before she was shot.
Good was a U.S. citizen, and DHS has stated she was not a target of an ICE investigation. She was shot just blocks from her home.
Footage before the shots complicates the official narrative
Another video captures moments before agents approached Good’s SUV. In it, Good extends her arm out of the open driver’s window and makes a “go ahead” gesture to a pickup truck that has pulled up and stopped only a few feet from her car—right before agents exit. That sequence suggests Good was not intentionally blocking the agents with her vehicle, as some have claimed.
A third video, recorded from the cellphone of the agent who shot Good, shows her smiling with the window down, saying, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.” It also shows a woman later identified as Becca Good, Good’s wife, standing outside the car and filming the agent. As the agent records their license plate, Becca says, “That’s OK, we don’t change our plates every morning, just so you know. It’ll be the same plate when you come talk to us later.”
Seconds later, two agents move toward the SUV. One tries to open the driver’s-side door while yelling, “Get out of the fucking car!” Good—seemingly reacting to what looks like an intensifying and hostile encounter—reverses, then moves forward. The camera jolts upward. A thud is heard. Three shots ring out in rapid succession. Afterward, a male voice says, “Fucking bitch.”
Officials have claimed the shooter feared for his life and acted in self-defense. The videos suggest something else: a tragedy that did not have to happen.
Why Supreme Court precedent matters here
In assessing whether a law enforcement officer’s use of deadly force was reasonable or excessive, the Supreme Court this past summer rejected the 5th Circuit’s narrow “moment of threat” approach—which limits the analysis to the instant of the shooting—as inconsistent with the Fourth Amendment. In Barnes v. Felix, the Court rejected that narrow time-framing and reiterated what it held in Graham v. Connor: evaluating use of force requires considering the totality of the circumstances.
Many defenses of the shooting focus on the split second before the trigger was pulled. Under a strict “moment-of-threat” view, one might freeze the scene at the instant an officer is positioned in front of Good’s vehicle as it inches forward, and conclude the officer feared for his life.
But widening the frame changes the picture. The officer placed himself in front of the moving vehicle. Good had been calm moments earlier, telling the agent, “That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you.” She moved forward only after other agents advanced on her SUV—one reaching through the open window, trying to open the driver’s-side door, and shouting for her to get out of the “fucking car.”
The claim that the officer needed to shoot to survive becomes harder to sustain when the footage suggests he stayed on his feet, moved to the side, and fired shots into the vehicle as Good turned right and attempted to drive away. The videos suggest she was trying to escape a hostile encounter—not deliberately trying to strike the agent who had placed himself in a dangerous position in front of her car.
The role of “officer-created jeopardy”
One question the Court did not resolve in Barnes is whether courts may consider prior law-enforcement conduct that increases the risk of an encounter turning deadly—often described as “officer-created jeopardy.” But under a totality-of-the-circumstances framework, it is difficult to argue that earlier actions that escalated the danger are irrelevant. If officer conduct helped create the peril, that conduct is part of the story.
Critics have noted that stepping in front of a moving vehicle is widely viewed as unsafe. Likewise, shooting into a moving vehicle is typically discouraged unless necessary to stop an armed or dangerous suspect—neither of which appears to describe Good—because of the risk to the occupant and bystanders.
The first shot appears to go through the windshield. The second and third shots appear to be fired from the side through the open driver’s window toward Good’s head as she tried to leave. By that point, the officer was not firing at someone running him over—as has been claimed—he was firing from the side as the vehicle moved away. If the goal was merely to stop the SUV, why aim at the driver’s head rather than the tires?
Blaming the victim doesn’t answer the central question
Noem said, “Any loss of life is a tragedy, and I think all of us can agree that, in this situation, it was preventable,” implying that the prevention was primarily Good’s responsibility. Vice President J.D. Vance similarly called Good’s death “a tragedy of her own making.” The underlying message is simple: if she had just complied, she would be alive.
But that framing sidesteps the more direct—and more troubling—point: this death was preventable because the shooter could have chosen not to fire.
The agent had already captured Good’s license plate on video. If the government wanted to identify her, it could have done so later. When the officer fired into the open driver’s-side window from the side of the car, Good was not posing an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to him or to others. She was not an armed suspect fleeing a violent crime. She was trying to get home to her children alive.
