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She described four or five agents piling on top of Pretti as he lay on the pavement. Moments later, gunfire erupted.
“They just started shooting him,” she said. “They shot him so many times. I don’t know why they shot him. He was only helping. I was five feet from him, and they just shot him.”
“The agents pulled the man on the ground,” she said. “I didn’t see him touch any of them. He wasn’t even turned toward them.”
The affidavit states that Pretti was shot more than ten times while pinned to the ground. Video footage reviewed by media outlets appears to corroborate key aspects of her account, showing Pretti restrained and surrounded by agents at the moment shots were fired.
The witness emphasized that Pretti did not approach agents with a weapon. “The man did not approach the agents with a gun,” she said. “He approached them with a camera. He was just trying to help a woman get up, and they took him to the ground.”
She concluded her statement with a raw expression of outrage and grief, saying she was “disgusted and gutted” by how federal agents were treating residents in her state.
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