Alex Pretti held a license to carry the handgun federal agents removed

Footage showed Pretti did not attack agents before he was shot

The Guardian reported that Alex Pretti had no criminal record and held a license to carry the handgun he had holstered before agents removed it and opened fire.

Video footage described by The Guardian showed Pretti holding a cellphone and not brandishing a weapon or attacking federal agents before they shot him in the back as he lay in the street. The footage contradicted the government account, The Guardian reported.

Pretti, 37, worked at a veterans hospital and died on 24 January after federal immigration agents fatally shot him in Minneapolis.

During a press conference in Minneapolis on Tuesday, Michael and Susan Pretti made their first public remarks since their son’s death in January. The couple said the federal government had not provided meaningful information about the case. They accused federal officials of stonewalling them and shielding Alex’s killers and called on the Department of Justice to hold those involved in their son’s death accountable.

Michael Pretti said federal officials had ignored and misled his family. “At every turn, they have ignored us, misled us and shielded Alex’s killers,” he said. “We are a family who love this country. We trust in the institutions of this country. We believe in the rule of law – and that people should be held accountable through that law.”

The Guardian reported that the Trump administration quickly painted Pretti as a domestic terrorist who was armed and baselessly accused him of wanting to harm agents during Donald Trump’s immigration operations in Minnesota. The administration defended the agents and said Pretti had violently resisted. Susan Pretti rejected that account. “The federal government went on TV and lied about Alex,” she said. “They tried to slander his memory to cover up their crime. Not only was it wrong, it was shameful.”

Michael and Susan Pretti said Todd Blanche, the US attorney general, and Dan Rosen, the top federal prosecutor in Minnesota, had stonewalled them. The couple said Rosen only agreed to meet them in July after they had reached out for months, but the prosecutor declined to provide basic information about the investigation’s status. The Trump administration has argued that the state does not have jurisdiction to investigate federal officers.

In a statement to Reuters, the Justice Department said that “communications with family members, if any, come at a later stage of a case, such as indictment, initial appearance, plea, trial, or sentencing. Those communications do not typically occur during an investigation.”

Minnesota officials recently said the federal government stopped sharing information with state investigators looking into the deaths of Pretti and Renee Good. Good, 37, was fatally shot by an ICE officer as she attempted to drive her car away during a protest in January.

The couple described the past year as miserable for their family and told CNN in an interview that they were asking only for justice. “We’re not asking for anything other than accountability and [for] the Department of Justice and Dan Rosen to do their jobs,” Susan Pretti said. “Alex was murdered nine months ago. It’s difficult to get up every day, to function, to be a parent, knowing that your child is never coming home.”

A photograph by Steven Garcia/Reuters showed Michael and Susan Pretti speaking to the media in Minneapolis on Tuesday. The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to The Guardian’s report.