Videos raise questions about DHS account of ICE shooting (Full Transcript)

[00:00:03] Speaker 1: Federal immigration officers fatally shot a man Saturday in Minneapolis. He was an ICU nurse who worked at a local veteran affairs hospital. Another controversial killing by U.S. immigration agents and the second U.S. citizen killed this month. CNN analyzed cell phone footage from multiple angles. Taken together, they appear at odds with the Department of Homeland Security's initial claims about the lead-up to officers firing on Alex Preddy. Around 9 a.m. central, video captures two people approaching a federal immigration officer in front of an unidentified vehicle. The sound of whistles is blaring in the background. Alex Preddy enters the frame here. He's filming an officer interacting with protesters and waving a car through. Fifteen seconds later, Preddy yells. In their statement, DHS said that an individual approached officers with, quote, a nine-millimeter semi-automatic handgun. This video seems to show officers approaching Preddy instead of the other way around. We'll see later that Preddy does appear to have had a gun in his waistband, but this video shows he didn't have a gun in his hand, only a phone. Video from this white car shows an up-close angle of a federal immigration officer pushing one protester. Then three seconds later, he pushes Preddy. And then as the camera comes into focus, you see the same federal officer push a third protester with the orange backpack. Preddy raises his hand and turns away just as the officer sprays him with a chemical irritant. You see Preddy and the other protester trying to help the person with the orange backpack. You can see here an officer pulling Preddy off of this person. Three more officers join, and then two more. Preddy is on the ground under them. One officer in a tan beanie can be seen repeatedly striking Preddy's head with a metal can. You can see an officer in a gray jacket walk into the frame. There isn't a gun in his hand. Seconds later, officers shout. The officer removes the gun from Preddy's belt. The officer steps away from the scene carrying a firearm, seen here in his right hand. Then gunfire. At least 10 shots ring out. We looked back at the scene from different angles and slowed down the footage. This officer wearing a black beanie can be seen drawing his firearm and pointing it in Preddy's direction. We can't see his gun when the first shot is fired, but we can see that this officer fired the second shot. In this angle, you see a second officer also had his gun drawn, and here he's pointing his weapon at Preddy as we hear gunshots, though it isn't clear if he's the one firing. Preddy collapses onto the ground as the officers scatter backwards from around him. The same agent in the black beanie from earlier can be seen firing five final shots as Preddy lies there motionless. Nobody approached his body for 24 seconds. When officers do return to Preddy, they appear to begin searching his body. Video shows that about a minute after Preddy collapsed, immigration officers ask for medical support. When CNN asked DHS about the officer removing the gun before the shooting, DHS repeated their earlier statement, quote, officers attempted to disarm the suspect, but the armed suspect violently resisted.

[00:03:51] Speaker 2: Joining me now is Juliette Kayyem, CNN national security analyst and former assistant secretary at DHS. Thank you for being with me, Juliette. And I want to play for you, Greg Bovino, the border patrol commander at large in just a moment. But first, this video, as we saw the breakdown, is there something in particular that stood out to you about how officers at the scene handled the moment?

[00:04:19] Speaker 3: I think we have to remember that they created it. I think every time I look at it, I am surprised how quickly it does the opposite of deescalate. So the situation that they find themselves in, even giving them the benefit of the doubt or they didn't know what was going on, they in fact created by their approach to Preddy this pile on that I've seen, I can't get over every time I see it. At that stage then, it's just chaos. It is absolutely no one seems to be in charge. They don't quite know what are they trying to do with him. Then there's this scream of the gun. The best case scenario for ICE is it was a confused shot that then led to multiple other shots. That's not right. But the problem was, is that then they came out immediately attacking the victim and saying everything they did was right, which we can see is not true. Let me jump in here with that.

[00:05:23] Speaker 2: Our own Dana DeBash had a very striking discussion with the border patrol commander, Greg Bovino. Here is the moment where she is asking him some of these questions about what was happening.

[00:05:36] Speaker 4: You don't know he was unarmed. I don't know he was unarmed. That's freeze frame adjudication of a crime scene via a photo. That's why we have investigators. That's why we have an investigation that is going to answer those questions. How many shots were fired? Who fired shots? Where was the guns? Where were the guns located? All those questions are going to be answered in the investigation. Us, we're not going to adjudicate that here on TV in one freeze frame there.

[00:06:08] Speaker 2: It was interesting hearing this phrase, freeze frame adjudication. What do you make of how he tried to defend this, at one point even saying that the sort of real victims were the ICE agents themselves?

[00:06:20] Speaker 1: Yeah.

[00:06:21] Speaker 3: Well, it's not freeze frame, it's freeze frames. This is the problem that the department finds itself in, is the citizen journalists and citizen videos from multiple viewpoints are unquestionable at this stage. What's interesting about what he did is, remember just about 24 hours before, they were completely slandering Mr. Preti about who he was and the situation that he brought, essentially brought upon himself. They've been trying to unwind that, recognizing that it's not a single freeze frame. It is multiple freeze frames from various perspectives that show a man who is essentially detained and not aggressive being shot multiple times in the back, as we've now learned. The department cannot have it both ways. It cannot slander the victim and then say, well, we don't actually know. Then when asked questions, we don't actually know what happened. There's going to be this investigation. The investigation, as we now know, does not involve state and locals, at least the federal investigation and is so, I would say worrisome, that even a court has stepped in to tell the federal government you cannot, essentially you cannot tamper with evidence.

[00:07:42] Speaker 2: Okay. That's Juliette Kayyem, even talking about the court hearings that we're going to be hearing ahead today. Juliette, thanks so much. One more aspect of this, the National Rifle Association joining other gun rights groups and pushing for an investigation into the killing of Alex Pretty, who was a lawful gun owner. In a statement posted on Axe, the NRA said, quote, responsible voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law of citizens. Now, this is all in response to the Trump administration's claim that Pretty posed a danger to officers simply for having a gun.

[00:08:19] Speaker 5: I don't know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign.

[00:08:28] Speaker 2: Okay. You guys were there showing, not Alex Pretty, but that is Kyle Rittenhouse from a few years ago during the 2020 elections, who became a kind of martyr on the right after he shot a protester. The reason why this is coming up is because after the shooting of Pretty, the federal officials did release a photo of a gun, not a gun in his hand or anything like that, but saying that this is something he had on his person. But it is not typical to see the NRA push back against the Trump administration in this way, Isaac.

[00:09:01] Speaker 6: No, and it's not just the NRA. You see a lot of people who care a lot about the Second Amendment and talked about Second Amendment rights over the course of the politics of the last few years, who are raising questions of why this is an issue. Minnesota is a concealed carry state. Pretty was, it seems like, within his rights to have that gun on him. There are questions of whether he should have had his ID or how that was done. But in the video that we see, it seems to most of the people who've looked at it, including our CNN analysis, that what he was holding was a cell phone as he videoed what was going on and that he was not the one who approached, but the ICE agents were the ones who approached. We'll see what happens with the investigation. But that's how the video analysis people have done this. And that is itself a question that needs to be sorted out. But there is nothing in itself illegal about the way that Pretty had that gun on his belt.