Woman with KC ties didn’t deserve to die at the hands of ICE agent in Minn. | Opinion
How does a nonviolent, unarmed American citizen end up dead at the hands of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent?
I feel bad for Renee Nicole Good and her loved ones. Good is the 37-year-old mother of three with Kansas City connections who was fatally shot by an ICE agent Wednesday in Minnesota. I can’t imagine the horror the poor woman faced as she stared down agents aggressively approaching her SUV before she pulled off and was struck by gunfire.
Good was shot less than seven seconds after agents jumped out of their own SUV, footage from video cameras show.
Like many of us who have watched clips of the encounter, I don’t know exactly what precipitated the deadly shooting. As with any use-of-force incident committed by law enforcement officials, it’s important to consider the full context of what occurred. But it would not be a stretch to say that no one should ever be shot to death without posing an imminent threat to a law enforcement official or others.
And let me be abundantly clear here: From the best I could tell from video footage that I watched, Good was no threat to anyone.
If the unidentified agent who shot her was so terrified of being struck by the slow moving vehicle — Good first reversed the truck then turned away from the agents standing near the SUV as she fled — he should have exercised better judgment and simply moved out of harm’s way.
And let’s not forget this very important fact: According to the Department of Homeland Security’s own use-of-force policy, shooting into a moving vehicle is prohibited unless there is reasonable fear of someone being seriously injured or killed by a fleeing vehicle. From what I’ve seen so far in this case, neither the lives of the agents nor people standing nearby were in peril.
A decent argument could be made — see Star national opinion columnist David Mastio’s take on the shooting — that the agent reasonably feared he was in danger, but I don’t believe that to be the case. In fact, why were immigration officials engaging with an American citizen anyway?
Remember when President Donald Trump’s administration said ICE and Border Patrol agents would deport the worst of the worst? I sure do. That was not the case here at all.
Only God knows why Good tried to leave the scene — but who could blame her for trying to escape from these hard-charging, unidentifiable agents? Fear creates fight-or-flight mode in many of us, so Good’s actions seemed reasonable to me. I’d like to think many of us put in a similar situation would be deathly afraid and try to flee as well.
Family members described her as a stay-at-home mother with no signs of activism, according to The Star. My heart goes out to those who knew Good well and to the bystanders who witnessed this horrendous turn of events.
As the investigation unfolds, we’ll learn more about Good, her life and why she was in the area Wednesday during some sort of demonstration in that city. The same can’t be said about the agents involved. The cloak-and-dagger-style mission these ICE agents are on under Trump’s guidance makes it almost impossible to properly identify these people.
Most of them are draped in camouflaged clothing with no visible name badge and wearing masks.
With that in mind, is there any wonder as to why Good tried to flee the scene?
