Local Minneapolis resident Stella Carlson, the woman seen in the background of multiple videos of the fatal federal shooting of 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti, has now spoken publicly for the first time.

Carlson was wearing a distinctive pink coat and filming on her phone as the shooting unfolded. She described what she witnessed in an interview with Anderson Cooper this week, and her account lines up exactly with what the videos already show.

Carlson says she was on her way to a community event when she heard the piercing whistle alerts used by community members to warn of ICE activity and saw a chaotic scene unfolding on Nicollet Avenue. She began filming as agents swarmed the area. Her footage has since circulated widely and has played a central role in dismantling early official lies that framed Pretti as a threat.

In Carlson’s video, Pretti never brandishes a weapon. Instead, he is trying to help a woman who had just been violently shoved to the ground by federal agents. Even as he is pepper-sprayed, tackled, and beaten with a canister, he is clearly not attacking anyone.

“I knew he was gone because I watched it,” Carlson said, describing the moment Pretti was shot multiple times by federal agents.

Carlson says that after Pretti was shot, agents did not rush to help him. They stood around his body laughing, joking, counting bullet holes, and mocking protesters while Pretti lay dying, behavior that bore no resemblance to an attempt to render medical aid.

Carlson has also said that despite giving a sworn statement, federal investigators have not contacted her directly about her footage or her testimony.

Her account, and the footage she captured, are critical evidence in understanding what happened on January 24, and while there may be no justice under the Trump administration, Trump will not be in power forever, and what people like Carlson are doing now is not passive observation but the deliberate preservation of truth, the longterm work of building a record that can’t be erased and will matter when this moment is finally reckoned with.

Reported and edited by TCS staff.