Bombay Durpun - Cold streets, hot fury: Minnesota mourns, rages after federal killings

Around him, candles burn in the frigid breeze and flowers glaciate at their stems. Pretti, mourners and US media said, died as he had lived -- caring for others. Now he is being remembered by strangers who came to honor a life cut violently short.

Anger has been simmering in Minneapolis for weeks, sparked after federal agents shot and killed Renee Good on January 7, and deepened when Pretti became the second US citizen killed during President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.

What had already seemed intolerable now feels, to many in Minnesota's largest city, unrecognizable.

A couple of miles south of downtown Minneapolis, the place where Pretti was killed has been transformed into a makeshift memorial -- just a few blocks from a similar shrine marking the spot where Good was shot.

Sidewalk snow has been ground hard by mourners' boots and the street corner has become a space for community: a place to grieve, to gather and to fret about a head-on collision with the Trump administration that has left residents feeling scared and unsafe.

Police officers stood nearby Monday as a steady stream of well-wishers -- a few dozen at a time -- stopped to leave flowers, photographs, candles and handwritten notes.

Some paused only briefly, heads bowed in silent reflection or prayer. Others lingered, fighting back tears in the brutal cold for a man they had never met.

With the wind chill, it felt like minus eight degrees Fahrenheit -- about minus 22 Celsius -- but people kept coming.

Hands gloved and faces wrapped in scarves, they braved the cold to stand before messages praising the bravery shown by Pretti, who was trying to help a woman who had been shoved to the ground when federal agents dragged him to his knees and shot him dead.

"Thank you for your compassion and love towards everyone you cared for," read one placard, balanced among bouquets, wreaths and other tributes.

- 'This is not America' -

McLaughlin, 68, a retired Minnesotan, said the killing -- and the government's baseless statements smearing Pretti as a terrorist out for blood -- had left him shaken.

"Corruption is now the rule -- you cannot trust the government. It's frighteningly despicable when you can execute someone in cold blood in the street and then defame them and lie about what happened," he told AFP.

"The world needs to know that. This needs to stop and we need to stop it now. This is slaughter in the streets. This is not America."

The memorial has become more than a marker of grief -- it provides a gathering point for a community struggling to reckon with fear, loss and a deepening sense that something fundamental is slipping away.

People embraced before moving on, leaving behind flowers, notes and quiet anger.

Taylor Stoddart, a 25-year-old business owner, shook her head as she spoke, her voice breaking with emotion.

"It's a lie. I mean it's terrifying, because we all have eyes, we all saw what happened. We all saw what happened on Saturday and we saw what happened with Renee Good," she said.

"They are trying to tell us not to believe our own eyes. Are you kidding me? It's really sad and it's really, really scary."

For Tricia Dolley, a nurse like Pretti, the killing struck especially close to home.

"This is not an America that we can live in. That is not what any of us wants, it can't be," she said.

"What's happening is an assault on the constitution and the rights of American citizens," she told AFP. "The freedoms that are being abridged currently are the freedoms that we fought for and are the reason for the American Revolution in the first place."

B.Chakrabarti--BD