Kristi Noel’s Preposterous Lies About the Killing Confirm That ICE Encourages Agent Violence
Videos taken by different people from various angles
(see CNN, ABC and
the New
York Times) show what happened, including one in
slow motion.
We see ICE agents apparently attempting to force Good out of
her vehicle, Good backing up, then Good trying escape by turning the wheels to
the right and driving forward. And we see ICE agent Jonathan Ross firing a
first shot at Good from near the front of the car, then firing two more shots
from alongside the car.
Common sense tells us that ICE shooter Ross never considered
himself in danger of being run over, since he deliberately stepped in front of
the car.
Consider these two screen captures from seconds 9 and 10 of
the video.
In the first, Ross appears to be in front of the vehicle and he is drawing his gun.
The vehicle had been moving backward just one second
earlier, so the vehicle’s forward movement was still slow. If Ross
thought the car might hit him, he had only to step to his right (our left) to
get out of the car’s path. Instead he draws his gun, aims and fires.
In the second photo we see the puff of vapor that
accompanies the first shot. We also see that both of Ross’s feet are to the
left of the car. Ross is not in the path of the car when he takes his first
shot. He is not saving himself from being run down.
Shots two and three are even more obviously not in
“self-defense.” As shown in the slow
motion video and the screen shot below, the car has moved forward and
the ICE agent is alongside the vehicle when he stretches out
his arm and shoots Renee Good in the head. He fires at point-blank range,
through the driver’s side window.
What you see is not a man being run down. What you see is not self-defense. It’s an execution.
Neither President Trump nor Homeland Security head Kristi
Noem have acknowledged that agent Jonathan Ross should not have taken out his
gun and killed a law-abiding citizen who only sought to escape from aggressive
ICE agents. Neither even said a terrible mistake had been made. They endorsed
and excused the killing.
The execution of Renee Nicole Good was part of a practice of
unnecessary and excessive
force which Trump and Noem approve of and support. ICE agents
have fired
their guns at people in cars at least ten times, and short of murder,
ICE agents routinely attack and brutalize those they seize. Violence
against observers and reporters is an attempt to conceal such lawless
ICE conduct.
The contention that an ICE shooting victim tried to run
them over has become the ICE equivalent of the German Nazi claim that slain
opponents were shot while attempting to escape.
No evidence supports any terrorism claim, but Noem asserted that
Good had been “stalking” ICE. President Trump pointed to a further “wrong”: “At
a very minimum,” said
Trump, “that woman was very, very disrespectful to law enforcement.”
Citizens of a democracy are entitled
to observe ICE agents, to deter them from lawless activity, and citizens of
a democracy are not required to be respectful of law enforcement.
If the Department of Homeland Security can with impunity kill citizens for exercising those rights, America will not long remain a free nation.
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