Witness recounts filming incident that ended in fatal shooting (Full Transcript)

[00:00:05] Speaker 1: Whoa.

[00:00:13] Speaker 2: Kayla Schultz is speaking for the first time on camera since the killing she witnessed. I talked to her earlier. First, we want to warn you, some of the conversation has graphic language and images. What made you decide to start documenting what's happening?

[00:00:29] Speaker 3: Well, it's because that's all we can really do at this point. What has happened in my city is absolutely devastating to me. I have witnessed and I've seen videos of my neighbors being kidnapped, and I know that all we can really do at this point is make some noise, make our voices heard, and film them so that they don't go missing without a trace, so that we can at least record their names and try to get contact information for their family or friends so that they know what has happened to them.

[00:01:06] Speaker 2: Saturday morning, how did you come to be there?

[00:01:09] Speaker 3: I received a notification, I was already out and about, and I went there with my whistle and my phone so that I could do what little I can in order to try to protect my neighbors.

[00:01:22] Speaker 2: Your video is really important because it's not only a different angle on things we have seen, but you also capture things that we haven't seen in other videos. What did you see before the video?

[00:01:35] Speaker 3: Before the video even starts, several federal agents crossed the street to come over to my window to tell me that I was obstructing, and they would pull me out of my car and arrest me for that. I told them I wasn't obstructing anything. We exchanged some not-so-nice words back and forth. The last thing that that federal agent who came up to my window said, and he screamed it at the top of his lungs, right in my face, was that I'm a fucking c**t.

[00:02:06] Speaker 2: Have you ever had a law enforcement officer say anything like that?

[00:02:10] Speaker 3: No, absolutely not. No one's ever actually called me that word at all.

[00:02:14] Speaker 2: Were you scared?

[00:02:15] Speaker 3: I was scared, but I absolutely refuse to show them that I'm scared. I think, and we saw this in the video, that they feed off of that. They want us to be afraid, and they want us to be intimidated.

[00:02:34] Speaker 2: They feed off it? Yes. In your personal experience, that's what you have seen?

[00:02:38] Speaker 3: Yes. I think that is one of their goals. They escalate in every single way if they are not able to use that fear in order to intimidate us into backing down.

[00:02:49] Speaker 2: So if you're not intimidated, they escalate?

[00:02:53] Speaker 3: And that's exactly what happened to Alex. He did not let them intimidate him. In fact, he stood up for two women, but they were absolutely brutalizing, and that made them mad that they were not able to intimidate him into tucking his tail and leaving.

[00:03:09] Speaker 2: Your video shows the two women who are talking with some officers in a vehicle. They are right next to you. Those two women are also visible in Stella Carlson's video, shot from the sidewalk not far from where Kayla Schultz's car is located. On your video, there's a man in a gray tan hat, an officer who pushes one of the women.

[00:03:36] Speaker 3: I don't know exactly whose words were whose at that point, but he, in my opinion, is the one that instigated this.

[00:03:46] Speaker 2: How so?

[00:03:48] Speaker 3: He just seemed angry. He seemed like he wanted vengeance for I don't know what. He wanted to be the big scary guy, and he just had absolutely no control over his emotions. I saw him shoving them very violently. It was not out of self-protection, in my opinion. It was purely out of rage.

[00:04:12] Speaker 2: You believe that pushing was kind of the genesis of everything else that then followed.

[00:04:20] Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. He was being so incredibly violent.

[00:04:24] Speaker 2: You briefly capture Stella Carlson, the lady in the pink jacket. You can actually see her documenting this from another, and when you compare the videos, it really gives a much more rounded view of what is going on. On your video, we see the Border Patrol agent who will end up shooting Alex Pretty. We see him spraying a chemical agent on a woman, or attempting to spray a small bottle of pepper spray or something into a woman's face. He seems to have some issue with his bottle, and he checks it. He sort of turns away and checks it for a moment. Your video actually captures the gun. Did you know that? I hadn't realized that when I first started looking at it. It's very grainy.

[00:05:13] Speaker 3: One moment, there were people being pushed around, there were people being maced right in front of me. That was upsetting enough. All of a sudden, I see so many federal agents, way more than was necessary, in order to take him down to the ground. The next thing I know, it's gunshots. It's so many gunshots. I couldn't believe it.

[00:05:37] Speaker 1: Holy shit. Oh my god. Oh.

[00:05:42] Speaker 3: I didn't immediately register that they were gunshots, in fact. My brain, I think, didn't want to believe it. I was hoping, praying that it was anything else but guns. I ended up looking away from my camera at that point and making out that they were holding real guns and they had just shot him.

[00:06:06] Speaker 2: After the shots, what do you remember?

[00:06:09] Speaker 3: After the shots, I saw pretty much all of them back away immediately. I was just absolutely in shock. I really have barely a recollection of the moments immediately after, other than just the feeling of absolute horror and also rage that it escalated like this. So they backed up, and I was sure he was dead, and then a couple of them did approach his body.

[00:06:44] Speaker 2: Could you see over the hood of your car, Alex, on the ground?

[00:06:48] Speaker 1: No.

[00:06:48] Speaker 3: And I'm glad for that. I saw the scuffle. I saw him being taken to the ground, and I saw the guns as they were firing, but at least I didn't have to watch him die.

[00:07:05] Speaker 2: You continue to roll. Your camera stayed on. You hear the officer who took the gun. He comes back and at a certain point says, I got the gun. You can hear that on your recording. Why did you want to talk, come forward?

[00:07:29] Speaker 3: I think it's important. I went back and forth for a while about this. I expect there to be some sort of fallout from this at some point. I expect that there will be probably ramifications to my employment, to my career, and to my safety. I expect that some people are going to try to label me as a domestic terrorist for trying to stand up for my community in what little ways that I can with my voice and with my phone recording. But it's important. This needs to be out there, and I need people to know what is going on here. I am scared of speaking out and having this public, having my face out there and my name. But if I can muster up one percent of the courage that Alex had shown there in order to maybe make some amount of change, I will. They want us, again, to be afraid of them. They want us to be scared, intimidated into silence, and we cannot. I can lose my safety. I can lose security. They can take everything away from me, but they can't take my voice.

[00:08:56] Speaker 2: You're scared, but you're still standing up.

[00:08:58] Speaker 3: Yes. I think it's so important. Now is not the time to stay silent in this for anyone at all. It's imperative. Things are going to get a lot worse, I think, not only in my city, but around this country as this project expands, and we all need to be courageous. We all need to be a little bit brave and, again, do what we can in order to stand up for our rights. I would ask that anyone who might feel compelled about any of this go to StandWithMinnesota.com and donate what they can in order to help us out.

[00:09:45] Speaker 2: Has anyone from the federal government reached out to get your witness statement?

[00:09:50] Speaker 3: No, not at all. I did, as soon as I could after this happened that same day, I went to the BCA office and— The state investigators. Yeah, exactly, and I gave them a statement. I provided them the video that I have, but I have not been reached out to by federal investigators.