State 'in good shape' to consider charging federal agents in slayings of Good, Pretti, Moriarty says

Jeff Day, The Minnesota Star Tribune on Feb 18, 2026

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MINNEAPOLIS — Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said Wednesday that with or without federal cooperation, state prosecutors are in “good shape” to make charging decisions against the federal agents who shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

While noting that her office continues to lack crucial evidence taken by the federal government, including the gun reportedly taken off Pretti before he was shot and the car Good was driving when she was shot, Moriarty said at a news conference on Feb. 18 that a trove of investigative materials remains available to state law enforcement.

“These cases, there’s no mystery about how these people died, right?” Moriarty said. “They were shot to death.”

In announcing that her office had sent additional Touhy letters to the federal government — the letters represent the formal demand and process for obtaining records and evidence from federal agencies — Moriarty said state investigations into the killings by her office, the Minnesota Attorney General and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension continue.

“The BCA never stopped investigating,” Moriarty said. “There’s plenty of information out there. We’ve gotten over a thousand submissions to our portals and the BCA has also been interviewing witnesses.”

Those portals were launched after the federal government broke with longstanding tradition and told state law enforcement there would be no joint investigation into the deadly use of force by their agents on the streets of Minneapolis. The portals provided an avenue for citizens to submit relevant evidence to the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office. Moriarty said a team on her staff has been reviewing the submissions

“None of what is happening with the federal government has stopped the BCA and our office from working together on gathering as much information as we possibly can,” Moriarty said. “Of course we would like to have access to whatever it is that the feds have, but I have said this repeatedly: we know some of the things they took.”

Moriarty said she doesn’t know what the charging decisions will be against the federal agents involved in the shootings, but “it certainly would be much easier if the federal government were not hiding evidence from us and obstructing our ability to do the investigation.”

On Monday, BCA Superintendent Drew Evans announced that the FBI had formally informed his office that it rejected sharing evidence related to the Pretti shooting with state law enforcement. To this day, the federal government has not named the federal agents involved in that shooting or Good’s. Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot Good, was identified by the Star Tribune. The Trump administration had previously said it was not investigating Ross for the shooting death of Good. Evans said his office remains open to sharing investigative materials with the federal government if its position changes.

This was the second time in three weeks that Moriarty’s office has issued Touhy letters to the federal government. On Feb. 3, her office requested evidence related to the killing of Good. On Wednesday, Moriarty announced additional requests for evidence from the killing of Pretti and the shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis. The County Attorney’s Office set a deadline of March 3 for the federal government to respond. They had set a Feb. 17 deadline on the request for evidence related to Good’s killing and never heard back.

Moriarty said if the federal government does not comply with the requests, her office will pursue other legal options.

“One of the options is to sue them in federal court,” Moriarty said.

The federal government’s position on the actions of the agents involved in the killings of Good and Pretti remains unclear, but that is not the case in the shooting of Sosa-Celis in north Minneapolis.

The initial federal narrative from the shooting that led to protests and clashes with federal agents in north Minneapolis on Jan. 24 has unraveled dramatically. Last week, federal prosecutors dismissed all charges against Sosa-Celis with prejudice, meaning he cannot be charged again.

Agents involved in the shooting said that Sosa-Celis and two other men had beaten a federal agent with a snow shovel and a broom, leading him to fire a defensive shot that went through Sosa-Celis’ leg.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said last week that both officers lied in sworn testimony about the encounter and have been placed on administrative leave “pending the completion of a thorough internal investigation” by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Moriarty called the dismissal of charges against Sosa-Celis “the latest in a long string of humiliations” for the Justice Department.