NEED TO KNOW
- Renee had just dropped her 6-year-old off at school when she encountered federal agents on Portland Ave. in Minneapolis and was fatally shot by an ICE agent amid a large enforcement operation
- Becca Good, the wife of Renee Nicole Good, released a statement on her wife’s fatal shooting by an ICE agent, saying, “We stopped to support our neighbors. We had whistles. They had guns.” Becca and their dog were reunited and sat on the steps of a nearby house as responding officers assessed the scene, PEOPLE confirms
- A vigil has been set up at the location where Renee was shot, and community members continue to protest and mourn her death
On a brisk morning in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, Renee Nicole Good, 37 — a mother of three, a wife, and a familiar face in her community — had just done the most ordinary thing imaginable.
After dropping off her 6-year-old son at school, Good and her wife, Becca, 40, were driving a maroon Honda Pilot together on a snowy street when Becca suggested they take a detour. Federal agents had flooded the city, 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 in 2025 as a firearms instructor and a member of the F.B.I.’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. “I heard three pops of the gun,” said witness Lynette Reini-Grandell. “The people around me started screaming … ‘You killed her!’”
Good reversed her SUV as an ICE agent attempted to open the driver’s side door, shouting “Get out of the f–king car.” As she began to pull forward, Ross fired through the windshield, and she accelerated quickly, eventually hitting another car and coming to a stop on Portland Ave.
The paramedics arrived at 9:42 a.m. and found Good in the driver’s seat, unresponsive, with blood on her face and torso, according to 60 pages of 911 call transcripts and police and fire department incident reports obtained by PEOPLE. Her wife Becca, 40, was holding her, sobbing, covered in blood, according to witnesses.
As SWAT team members approached the scene and began yelling at bystanders to get back, Becca began screaming, “My wife!” according to a neighbor, who asked to remain anonymous. Photos of Good’s Honda Pilot at the scene showed a blood-soaked airbag and stuffed animals in the glove compartment.
Good had two apparent gunshot wounds on the right side of her chest, another on her left forearm and a fourth on the left side of her head, according to the records. Blood was flowing from her left ear and her pupils were dilated.
Becca walked to the closest neighbor’s yard and sat on the steps. “Hey, can we get her a towel to clean her face off?” a roommate asked a man who asked to be identified as James, a former firefighter and first responder. Becca stood in the front yard of their sober home, drenched and stunned. As she began to stand and cry, she said, “There’s a dog in the back. Can someone get it for me, please?”
“I saw the hole in the windshield. It looked chest level,” James told PEOPLE. Inside the car, the damage was unmistakable.
“There was so much blood around the airbag. The white airbag was red. There was so much blood,” he continued, shaking his head. “Renee’s body and her front seat were covered in blood. I could see the bullet hole through her left side. It was very, very gruesome.”
Calls to 911 began at 9:38 a.m. on Jan. 7, shortly after Ross fired his gun into Good’s SUV as observers and protesters confronted federal agents. The frantic calls persisted for about an hour.
“There’s 15 ICE agents, and they shot her, like, because she wouldn’t open her car door,” one caller said.
“I witnessed it,” a separate caller told an operator. Asked if anyone was hit, she replied, after catching her breath, “Yes, bleeding.” The caller later said, “She tried to drive away, but crashed into the nearest vehicle that was parked.”
The caller said she saw blood all over the driver. The dispatcher responded that “lots of help” was on the way.
Another caller pleaded, “Send an ambulance please. Ambulance, please.”
After officers removed Good from the vehicle about 25 minutes later, according to police sources, she was not breathing and had an irregular pulse. According to a neighbor, Becca had already gone the hospital.
Attempts were made to resuscitate Good, to no avail. According to police records, an ambulance transported her toward the hospital but resuscitation efforts were stopped after 10 a.m.
Meanwhile, after shooting Good, Ross remained on the scene. About 15 minutes later, he was taken to a federal building. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told PEOPLE on Jan. 14 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.
Ross hasn’t been accused of a crime. But many use-of-force experts have criticized his actions. “In order to use deadly force, your life or someone else’s life must be in immediate danger,” said Chris Burbank, a former Salt Lake City police chief who doesn’t believe Good posed any such risk to Ross.
The investigation has already been marred by controversy and conflict. Federal officials said the FBI would handle the inquiry, contending that Minnesota authorities have no jurisdiction in the matter. In response, state Attorney General Keith Ellison called for “a fair, transparent investigation of all of the facts.”
Despite the administration’s claims that Good was a “domestic terrorist” who deliberately sought to kill ICE agents with her car, her mother Donna and father Tim Ganger, along with Good’s four siblings, told PEOPLE Good “was a beautiful light of our family and brought joy to anyone she met. She was relentlessly hopeful and optimistic which was contagious. We all already miss her more than words could ever express.”
Witnesses said Good’s widow, Becca, collapsed into grief on the steps of a neighbor’s house. She was later reunited with her dog, stroking him in a stunned quiet before being taken to the hospital. “We stopped to support our neighbors,” Becca said in a statement on Jan. 9. “We had whistles. They had guns.”
Even as protests, vigils, and political debate continue, just around the corner from where Renee was killed, her 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.”
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