In ICE Cold Blood

Jeffrey St. Clair

Many of the people who have spent the last five years denouncing the killing of Ashli Babbitt for raiding the Capitol in an attempt to overturn an election are celebrating the murder of Renee Nichole Good, a terrified mother killed by masked men from unmarked cars who chased her down a neighborhood street and shot her in the face.

At 9:30 on Wednesday morning, Renee Good was sitting in her Honda Pilot, with her life partner and dog, on Portland Avenue in the Central neighborhood of Minneapolis, when two unmarked cars approached her. Good waved her hand, signaling for the unmarked cars to go around her. Instead, they stopped.  Masked men got out. Good told them: “I’m pulling out.”

As two of the men advanced near her maroon Pilot, one of them told her to “Move, move, move,” while the other shouted, “Get out of the fucking car.” These contradictory instructions are a frequent tactic, since, however you respond, you violate one of the orders, and offer an excuse for escalation.

One of the masked men tried to open the passenger door and reach through the window toward Good. Another of the agents walked casually around Renee’s SUV holding his cellphone above his shoulders, filming the encounter, as many ICEmen have been ordered to do by DHS so the agency and the White House can use the footage for social media propaganda. This is the man who would moments later shoot Good. Good put her car in reverse, backed up a little, then pulled forward slowly, turning away from the masked ICE agent who was slightly in front of her. He moves out of the way, almost casually. As the officer who would kill her seconds later stood outside the window of her Honda, Good said, “That’s fine dude, I’m not mad at you. Then the officer dropped his cellphone, grabbed his gun, fired three shots into Good’s car, hitting her in the face, and grunted, “Fuckin’ bitch.”

As she slumped forward, her foot reflexively pressed down on the accelerator and the car lurched forward, hitting a parked car and a light pole a few yards down the street, where it came to a rest. Her partner was heard screaming, “They’ve killed my wife! “They killed my wife. I don’t know what to do. They shot her in the head.”

A bystander who witnessed the shooting rushed forward to help, but was stopped by an ICE agent. The man said he was a doctor and could render medical aid to the woman who was shot. The ICE agent responded brusquely: “I don’t care,” and ordered him to stay back. Fifteen minutes passed until an ambulance pulled onto Portland Avenue. But it was blocked from coming to Good’s aid by ICE vehicles. Finally, two paramedics trekked through the snow to the scene of the shooting, where they tried to treat Good’s fatal wounds. She was later pronounced dead at Hennepin Hospital.

Before her blood was even dry, the President and his henchmen had smeared this bright young woman, this mother and poet, as a domestic terrorist, as an attempted assassin, as a leftist thug. They smeared her before knowing anything about her, what she’d done that day, how she lived her life, who she loved and cared for, what her friends and neighbors and colleagues thought of her. To Trump and his minions, she was an obstacle, someone standing in the way and, therefore, someone who deserved whatever she got, even if it was a bullet in the face.

Now the FBI is blocking Minnesota law enforcement officials from analyzing evidence from the shooting. You wonder why they bother. What is there to hide? 

The murder of Renee Good happened in plain sight. We’ve all seen it from various angles. There was no one in front of Good’s car when she pulled out. No one was run over. The shots were fired from the side, not the front of her Honda. The ICE agent shot her and he walked away. He didn’t limp. He didn’t flinch in pain. He simply walked away. He didn’t seek treatment from the paramedics on the scene. Or show any wounds to his fellow agents. He just walked away.  He walked around the scene for three minutes. Then he got in a car and left. (The Intercept identified the alleged shooter as Jonathan Ross, an ICE agent based in St. Paul.) Renee Good was denied medical care and left to bleed out in her car. There’s nothing left to cover up.

Renee Nicole Good. Photo: Old Dominion University English Department/Facebook.