\n A witness to Saturday\u2019s shooting in Minneapolis described watching a man \u2013 later identified as Alex Pretti \u2013 be shot by a federal agent after trying to help a woman who had been pepper sprayed, saying he did not resist or reach for a gun, according to a new filing in a lawsuit against the Trump administration brought by protesters in December.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cI have read the statement from DHS about what happened and it is wrong,\u201d the unnamed witness said in the Saturday filing. \u201cThe man did not approach the agents with a gun. He approached them with a camera. He was just trying to help a woman get up and they took him to the ground.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n The Department of Homeland Security said earlier<\/a> that Border Patrol officers attempted to disarm an armed man who had approached them, and an agent fired defensive shots when the man \u201cviolently resisted.\u201d Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino claimed the man was trying to \u201cmassacre law enforcement<\/a>.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The witness said Pretti was observing and helping to direct traffic around a convoy of federal vehicles before he and the witness moved closer to document the immigration activity with their phones. When an agent asked them to back up, the witness said they moved onto the sidewalk, but Pretti stayed in the street and filmed.\n <\/p>\n \n Pretti moved closer to two other observers in the street as they were threatened with pepper spray and one was pushed to the ground, the witness said. An agent sprayed all three of them in the face, the witness said. Pretti put his hands above his head and was sprayed again and pushed by the agent.\n <\/p>\n \n Pretti then tried to help the woman who was pushed to the ground before being grabbed by multiple agents and pulled to the ground, the witness said.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201dI didn\u2019t see him touch any of them\u2013he wasn\u2019t even turned toward them. It didn\u2019t look like he was trying to resist, just trying to help the woman up. I didn\u2019t see him with a gun,\u201d they wrote. \u201cFour or five agents had him on the ground and they just started shooting him. They shot him so many times.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n CNN has reached out to lawyers for the witnesses and DHS for comment on the new filings.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A witness to Saturday\u2019s shooting in Minneapolis described watching a man \u2013 later identified as Alex Pretti \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431784,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-431783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}