The woman fatally shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis on Wednesday has been identified as Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother and U.S. citizen.
The Minnesota Star Tribune spoke to her mother, Donna Ganger, who called her “one of the kindest people I’ve ever known.”
“She was extremely compassionate," Ganger told the Tribune. “She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being.”
The Minneapolis City Council described Good in a joint statement as a resident who was out “caring for her neighbors” when she was killed.
In a separate statement, Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., said she was “heartbroken and angry” about the death of Good, whom she called “a U.S. citizen, a mother, and a Twin Cities resident.”
A relative said the family is mourning her death and will release a statement when appropriate.
Court documents filed in 2023 show that Good was the mother of three children. At the time, two of the children were living in Colorado and one in Missouri.
A woman who said she lived across the street from Good and her partner in Kansas City described the pair as quiet homebodies who lived with a young son and didn’t appear to be activists.
“I can’t see this having been like a premeditated thing on their part, and I think it’s just senseless,” Jennifer Ferguson, who said she lived across the street from the couple for a year and a half, told NBC News.
“I just pray that we don’t have more violence over it,” said Ferguson, 43.
A friend of Good's partner told NBC News that the couple traveled often, living in Canada for a period of time after they left Kansas City in 2024 and moving to Minneapolis last summer.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said she was shot after people began blocking officers during an immigration-related operation in the city.
At a news conference Wednesday night, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said the woman ignored commands to get out of the car she was driving and tried to run over an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in an “attempt to kill or to cause bodily harm to agents.” That officer was the one who shot the woman, Noem said.
The officer was struck by the vehicle and treated at a hospital before being released, Noem said. She declined to answer a question about whether the officer opened fire before or after allegedly having been struck by the vehicle.
“I know you keep asking that, but that doesn’t mean that the FBI is going to give you an answer today. There will be an investigation; we want to make sure that it’s factual,” Noem said in reply to a reporter's question.
Her mother told the Star Tribune that Good was not part of ICE-related protests. Shortly after the shooting, local and state officials disputed federal authorities' narrative of events, with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz saying he had seen a video of the shooting and warning people not to believe “the propaganda machine.”
A video of the encounter obtained by NBC News shows officers ordering a person out of an SUV in a residential part of Minneapolis. One of the officers can be seen trying to open the driver’s side door before the vehicle drives in reverse a few feet, then begins driving forward.
As the SUV moves, multiple gunshots can be heard and the vehicle crashes into a parked car. It is not clear what happened before the part of the encounter that was captured on video.
The FBI is investigating the shooting.
In a statement, Old Dominion University President Brian Hemphill said Good graduated from the school in 2020 with an English degree. He called her killing "yet another clear example that fear and violence have sadly become commonplace in our nation."
"May Renee’s life be a reminder of what unites us: freedom, love, and peace," Hemphill said. "My hope is for compassion, healing, and reflection at a time that is becoming one of the darkest and most uncertain periods in our nation’s history.”
The Department of Homeland Security has deployed hundreds more immigration agents to Minneapolis in response to a viral video from a right-wing YouTuber alleging that Somali-run day care centers were receiving federal subsidies without caring for children.
The Minnesota Department of Children, Youth and Families investigated the allegations and said compliance checks at the facilities found children present at all but one that closed in 2022.
