Candlelight vigils are always solemn, but the mood on Gilman Drive just north and east of VA Medical Center San Diego was downright heartbroken Thursday night as hundreds gathered to mourn the killing of Minneapolis ICU nurse Alex Pretti.
Hundreds of health care workers and others attended the gathering, organized by National Nurses United, supporting each other in their grief following the slaying on Jan. 24 by ICE agents while participating in widespread protests against ongoing federal immigration action in Minnesota’s largest city.
Many present Thursday found little comfort in the 57 degree temperature differential between La Jolla and Minneapolis. One nurse, asked to describe how she was feeling, declined, saying only “I can’t, I’ll start crying.”
Mourners pay tribute during a candlelight vigil at the VA Hospital at UCSD in University City on Thursday, January 29, 2026. The vigil was in honor of slain nurse Alex Pretti who was killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis. (Sandy Huffaker / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Tears were in the eyes of a UC San Diego Health licensed vocational nurse who struggled to find the words to describe the feeling that has moved among health care workers like a cold fog this week.
“It’s just heavy, you know; I think, honestly, his death was just like the tipping point,” she said. “You can watch the video, and there’s no arguing; he wasn’t trying to attack an ICE officer, he was defending someone.
“He died doing what we do everyday, and hearing him called a ‘domestic terrorist,’ how dare you?”
While the majority of participants Thursday evening were nurses or other types of medical workers, some arrived simply out of a need to take some sort of action after witnessing the weekend tragedy mediated through every form of electronic media possible.
Matt Glynn, who said he was visiting his sister from his home in Portland, said he felt compelled to stand with others in solidarity, united in the notion that what occurred thousands of miles away is simply too jarring to ignore.
Mourners pay tribute during a candlelight vigil in honor of slain nurse Alex Pretti at the VA Hospital at UCSD in University City on Thursday, January 29, 2026. (Sandy Huffaker / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
“I just feel like, what’s going on in our country right now?” Glynn said. “This is not the America I grew up in, and it’s not the America that my historian, military officer father raised me to believe in.
“I just feel like it’s my duty as a citizen to make my voice heard a little bit.”
ICU nurse Lizzie Jones, like Stell, said the truly galvanizing shock was seeing someone who dedicated their life to helping others gunned down for reaching out.
“In the case of Alex Pretti, he was trying to give aid; that’s what nurses do, we hear somone yelling ‘help,’ or see someone who’s in trouble, and we run towards that, we don’t run the opposite direction,” Jones said. “And that’s what he did and, for that, he was murdered in cold blood.
“You know it’s hard as it is to do our jobs … it’s got to stop. There are more people who think like we do than there are who think like the current administration does.”