The ICE Agent Who Killed Renee Good Disregarded Traffic Stop Guidelines
Jonathan Ross positioned himself in front of Good's car and continued firing even after he was no longer in its path.
During a contentious interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem reiterated her claim that Renee Good, the woman who was fatally shot by an immigration agent in Minneapolis last Wednesday, was engaged in "domestic terrorism" because "she weaponized her vehicle to conduct an act of violence against a law enforcement officer and the public." Noem added that Jonathan Ross, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer who killed Good, "acted on his training and defended himself and his life and his fellow colleagues" when he fired at the Honda Pilot she was driving.
Judging from bystander video of the incident, those claims are dubious. That evidence does not definitively resolve the question of whether the shooting was legally justified. But it does suggest that Good, who was monitoring ICE activities in Minneapolis and attracted attention because she was blocking a lane of traffic on Portland Avenue, was trying to leave the scene rather than trying to run Ross down. It also indicates that Ross' tactics deviated from Justice Department guidelines and from police training regarding traffic stops.
"Those officers had been out in an enforcement action," Noem told Tapper. "A vehicle had been stuck [in the snow]. They had come to help get that vehicle out. That's when this individual [Good] started blocking traffic for minutes and minutes….[She] was yelling at them and impeding a federal law enforcement investigation. That's what you need to focus on, Jake….They were breaking the law by impeding and obstructing a law enforcement operation."
On Friday, Vice President J.D. Vance posted Ross' own cell phone video of the encounter, saying it confirmed that "his life was endangered and he fired in self defense." But that video is inconsistent with Noem's account in some ways, and it raises questions about Ross' behavior prior to the shooting.
Although Noem said Good "blocked the road for a long time," Ross' footage and the other videos show cars driving past Good, using the lane that was still open. And although Noem said Good was "yelling at" the ICE officers, she is smiling in Ross' video and does not raise her voice. "That's fine, dude," she calmly tells Ross as he approaches her car, holding up his cell phone. "I'm not mad at you." Ross moves to the rear of the car, recording the license plate.
"That's OK," says Good's wife, who has stepped out of the car and is recording the scene with her own cell phone camera. "We don't change our plates every morning, just so you know. It'll be the same plate when you come talk to us later. That's fine."
Although Good's wife also seems calm, her attitude is more confrontational. "You want to come at us?" she says. "I say go get yourself some lunch, big boy." At this point, another ICE agent tells Good to "get out of the fucking car." Other videos show that agent grabbing the handle of the front driver's side door and reaching into the car. Meanwhile, Ross walks around the car to the front. Other footage shows him positioned near the left front bumper. "Drive, baby, drive," Good's wife says.
The car backs up a bit, then moves forward, the front wheels turned to the right—away from the ICE agents. "Whoa," Ross exclaims before firing three shots at the car, one through the lower left corner of the windshield and two more through the front driver's side window. The SUV continues moving down the street before crashing into a car parked on the left side. "Fucking bitch," someone says. When Tapper asked Noem if that was Ross speaking, she said "it could be."
Ross' conduct prior to the shooting raises a couple of questions. First, why did he record the scene with his cell phone, keeping one of his hands occupied during a potentially dangerous encounter with someone Noem describes as a domestic terrorist? Second, why did Ross position himself in front of the car, which by Noem's account exposed him to the threat that justified firing his weapon?
"If you're an agent," security consultant Jonathan Wackrow told CNN, "you should not be encumbered by anything in your hands. That's what body-worn cameras are for. But they're not wearing body-worn cameras."
Law enforcement officers are trained not to stand in front of a car during a traffic stop, precisely because of the danger that Noem emphasizes. "Officers should not stand in front of the suspect vehicle," says the Metropolitan Police Academy, which trains Washington, D.C., cops. The preferred position, aimed at minimizing the risk to officers, is on the driver's side or the passenger's side at or behind the "B pillar" separating the front and rear seats.
"Stepping in front of, standing behind or attempting to grab a vehicle to stop it will always be a losing, possibly fatal proposition," warns former Minnesota police officer Duane Wolfe in a recent Police1 article. "You can dramatically cut down on your chance of being run over by doing everything in your power to avoid standing directly in front [of] or behind a vehicle."
If an officer nevertheless finds himself in the path of a moving vehicle, the Justice Department says, he may fire his weapon only if there is "no other objectively reasonable means of defense," such as "moving out of the path of the vehicle." Video shows that Ross did in fact quickly move away from the front of Good's car.
At that point, according to Noem, Ross had already been struck. "He was injured," she told Tapper. "He went to the hospital. He was treated."
The bystander videos do not clearly show whether the car made contact with Ross, although they do show him walking around after the shooting, which suggests that whatever injury he may have suffered was not very serious. In any case, President Donald Trump was clearly exaggerating when he said Good "violently, willfully, and viciously ran over" Ross, adding that "it is hard to believe he is alive."
Whether or not the car actually hit Ross, and regardless of how seriously he was injured, he reasonably perceived a danger while he remained in front of the vehicle (where he would not have been had he followed standard police practice). But it is not clear whether he was in the car's path when he fired the first shot, and he definitely was not when he fired the second and third shots.
When Tapper asked Noem about the justification for the shots that Ross fired as the car passed him, she noted that Ross was making a "split-second" decision, adding that he "took action based on his training to protect himself and the public." But it is hard to see in what sense that is true, since shooting Good did not stop the car from moving. To the contrary, the SUV careened down the street without guidance, stopping only after it crashed into another car. If anything, Ross aggravated any threat the car may have posed by killing the person who was steering it.
Last Thursday, Vance sought to illuminate Ross' state of mind by noting a June 2025 incident in which he was injured after pulling over Roberto Carlos Muñoz, a Guatemalan who had been convicted of sexual abuse. "That very ICE officer nearly had his life ended, dragged by a car, six months ago," Vance told reporters. "You think maybe he's a little bit sensitive about someone ramming him with an automobile?"
As Tapper noted in his interview with Noem, that explanation suggests the earlier experience "might have influenced" how Ross responded to Good. "There's no indication [of] that," Noem said, which makes you wonder why Vance thought the information was relevant.
It does seem to be relevant in at least one respect. As The New York Times notes, Ross was dragged because of how he responded after Muñoz refused to roll down his window and open his door. Ross "then pulled his Taser, shattered the rear driver's side window of Mr. Muñoz's car and reached in with one arm to try to unlock a door," the Times reports. "At that point, Mr. Muñoz shifted into drive and pulled away, dragging the agent."
Ross was dragged for about 100 yards, suffering an arm injury that required 20 stitches. "I feared for my life," Ross recalled at the December trial that resulted in Muñoz's conviction for assaulting a federal officer with a dangerous weapon.
While that ordeal was surely traumatic, Ross could have avoided it if he had followed another basic precaution that police officers are supposed to take during traffic stops. "Never reach into the car," a Police1 article warns. "Officers who reach into the vehicle run the risk of being dragged or otherwise attacked." The agent who told Good to "get out of the fucking car" likewise ignored that advice.
Given the direction in which Good was steering, it seems doubtful that she intentionally "weaponized her vehicle." Ross may nevertheless have reasonably believed he was in danger when the SUV began moving forward, although that does not necessarily justify his response, especially after he was no longer in the vehicle's path. And he could have avoided the rapid escalation of the encounter if he had taken basic precautions, which he seems to have a history of ignoring.
"This investigation will continue to unfold," Noem told Tapper, "and more and more information will come [out]." Yet Noem has prejudged the outcome by asserting that Good deliberately tried to run Ross down, that Ross acted in self-defense, and that he followed his training. She was making such statements, which the president and the vice president echoed, within hours of the incident. If all the relevant facts were already known at that point, why bother with an investigation?
