Inside the Heartbreaking Vigil for Renee Good After Her Fatal Shooting by an ICE Agent (Exclusive) By Danielle Bacher

In the days after Renee Nicole Good, 37, was killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent on January 7, the block of Portland Ave. where she died turned into a living, breathing reckoning. Thousands gathered there in Minneapolis — neighbors, organizers and families with children on their shoulders, holding candles against the cold night and shouting into the air, their voices rising and colliding like waves.

“We must demand justice to see it in this country.” “Say her name.” “Renee Good.” “Shame.” “We will not put up with ICE.” The chants came in unison, then fractured, then roared back louder. “No justice!” “No peace!” And finally, the raw anger, unfiltered. “F–K ICE. F–K TRUMP!”

Good was a mother of three, a wife, a familiar face in her community, someone who hours before she was killed had done the most ordinary thing imaginable. After dropping off her 6-year-old son at school last week, Good and her wife, Becca, were driving together when Becca suggested they take a detour. Federal agents had flooded Minneapolis, part of a sweeping ICE operation. People were already gathering, protesting the presence of thousands of armed agents in their city. Good agreed to go. She never made it home.

What happened next took mere seconds. Good was fatally shot behind the wheel by Jonathan Ross, who joined ICE in 2015 and was serving last year as a firearms instructor and a member of the F.B.I.’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. “I heard three pops of the gun,” says witness Lynette Reini-Grandell. “The people around me started screaming … ‘You killed her!’”

Almost immediately, sharply contrasting narratives formed. President Donald Trump and other federal officials said an ICE agent shot and killed Good in self-defense, accusing her of trying to use her vehicle to run over law enforcement officers. State and local officials described those accounts with words like “propaganda” and “garbage.” A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told PEOPLE that Ross was taken to the hospital that day and suffered internal bleeding in his torso, but declined to answer further questions about the incident.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem insisted Good committed “domestic terrorism” and could have hurt one of the officers with her vehicle. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pushed back hard on this claim. “What we’re seeing is the consequences of governance… by reality TV,” he said. “And today that recklessness cost someone their life.”

Video surveillance shows aspects of the chaotic chain of events. Against the backdrop of demonstrators’ horns and whistles, Good partially blocked traffic with her SUV on a one-way residential street lined with snow. Federal officers approached her vehicle, with Good, Becca and their dog in the backseat.

At one point, Good told ICE, “I’m not mad at you,” as her wife, who was standing nearby, heckled the masked officers. One of them ordered Good to “get out of the f—ing car.” Then he reached for her door, and Good began to reverse her SUV.

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That is when a second officer crossed in front of her vehicle as Good turned her wheels and attempted to drive away from the agents, whom federal authorities allege she was trying to run over. The ICE agent in front of Good, Iraq War veteran Ross, pulled out his service revolver and fired at least three shots into her SUV. The vehicle instantly accelerated, crashing into two parked cars. Ross, or someone near him, was heard calling Good a “f–king bitch.” He then told colleagues to call 911 and left.

Witnesses say Good’s blood-spattered widow, Becca, 40, was overcome with grief on the steps of a neighbor’s house, asking for a towel before being reunited with her dog. “We stopped to support our neighbors,” Becca said in a statement on Jan. 9. “We had whistles. They had guns.”

The shooting came more than five years after the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, a mile from where Good died, an event that sparked uprisings and a global movement for racial justice in a city still struggling to heal. The geography alone felt cruelly familiar, another flashpoint layered onto unresolved grief, another reminder of how quickly history can repeat itself here.

Three days after Good’s killing, on Saturday, Jan. 10, the vigil at the site of her death was dense with thousands of flowers, signs and paintings. Early in the afternoon, one man poured milk over the area, chanting as he cut open a pomegranate and scattered the seeds across the memorial. Others knelt in prayer, crying softly. Kristen, a teacher from St. Paul, stood nearby watching the scene unfold. “It’s been really peaceful, calm,” she says. “From what I’ve seen, people are coming together, people helping each other out.”

Neighbors spoke of Good and her wife with love, refusing to let Renee be reduced to a headline. Carolyn Bredeson, who lives nearby, said the couple were very “friendly, open, warm people. Renee was just very vibrant and sweet,” she added. “I was over here after the killing happened and there was a lot of tension and anger.”

As night fell, the tone shifted. Those closest to the heart of the vigil waved signs reading “REMEMBER” “RENEE GOOD. ICE BAD” and “F–K ICE” and chanted against the agency and the Trump administration, led by a protester shouting through a megaphone.

Along the edges of the crowd, which stretched several blocks down the street, friends broke into smaller conversations while neighbors handed out free coffee and samosas. A handful of Minneapolis police patrolled nearby, yellow crime tape lining the street and separating drivers from the crowd, until one man was arrested for throwing a frozen water bottle at someone’s head and shattering multiple candles at the vigil.

“It was very, very gruesome,” says James, who retrieved a towel for Becca after her wife was shot. “I saw the bullet hole on the left, through [Good’s] head. Everyone was very hysterical. As soon as the police removed the barricades down at the end, everybody chased them out of here.”

Even as protests, vigils, and political debate continue, just around the corner from where she was killed, Good’s widow is trying to pick up the pieces. In a statement, Becca spoke not only of loss, but of what comes next. “I am now left to raise our son and to continue teaching him, as Renee believed, that there are people building a better world for him.”