Misrepresented and fabricated images spread on social media in the aftermath of a fatal Minneapolis shooting in which an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer killed Renee Good, Associated Press reported. AP’s fact check said multiple images were shared with false claims about the victim, the officer, and even whether Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was discussing the episode.
AP reported that some of the earliest images circulating online were misidentified as showing the ICE officer without a mask at the scene. The outlet said the images were fabricated, describing them as appearing to be screenshots from a video in which the officer’s face could not be seen without a mask. Digital forensics expert Hany Farid of the University of California, Berkeley, said the images appeared to have been generated by AI and were unlikely to reflect what the officer looks like, adding that AI enhancement or reconstruction is not consistently reliable in this kind of obscured-face example.
AP also reported false claims that the officer’s name was Steve Grove. The outlet said the officer’s name is Jonathan Ross, citing AP reporting that federal officials had not named the officer, while Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a separate case that the agent who shot Good had been dragged by a vehicle last June. AP said a department spokesperson confirmed Noem was referring to the Bloomington, Minnesota, case in which documents identified the injured officer as Ross, and it said social media users continued to incorrectly identify him as Grove. AP included a statement from the Minnesota Star Tribune saying it was monitoring “a coordinated online disinformation campaign incorrectly identifying the ICE agent involved in yesterday’s shooting” and that “the ICE agent has no known affiliation with the Star Tribune.”
Another set of false posts involved photographs of a blond woman with a small child that AP said were erroneously shared as images of Good. AP identified the photos as belonging to Renee Paquette, a former WWE wrestler, and her daughter. AP said one photo showed Paquette kneeling while her daughter hugged her, and that Paquette posted it to Instagram on International Women’s Day in 2023 with a caption about raising “a strong, independent, free thinking, confident woman.” AP said another photo showed Paquette kissing her daughter’s cheek and that it was posted in 2024 for her daughter’s third birthday. AP reported that Paquette commented on a post misrepresenting her photos, writing, “Wrong Renée. My condolences to her family.”
AP also reported a separate false claim involving a photo of a woman with short, pale pink hair wearing a green sweater that was shared as Good. The outlet said the person in the image was Gabriela Szczepankiewicz. AP said both Szczepankiewicz’s photo and Good’s photo—identified in that picture as Renee Macklin—appeared in a 2020 Facebook post from Old Dominion University announcing winners of an Academy of American Poets Prize. AP said Szczepankiewicz earned an honorable mention in the undergraduate category that year and that her photo was the first to appear in the post, while it said Good, identified as Renee Macklin in her photo, won the undergraduate category and her photo appeared third.
AP further reported a false claim involving an image of a man with what was described as a Nazi tattoo on his neck. The outlet said the image came from an Instagram video posted Jan. 5, two days before the shooting, and that the tattooed man in that video was not the officer seen in the shooting footage. AP said the tattoo consisted of two black lightning bolts resembling SS bolts placed behind the man’s right earlobe, and it reported that the man told another person he “had this done years ago” and “ain’t had no time to change it.” In contrast, AP said the officer in the shooting footage—about one minute in—was walking with a mask covering the bottom half of his face and did not have a tattoo behind his right earlobe.
Finally, AP reported a video circulating online as evidence that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis defended Good was false. The outlet said the video came from a June interview DeSantis gave on “The Rubin Report” during protests that month about President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles. AP quoted DeSantis saying, “And we also have a policy that if you’re driving on one of those streets and a mob comes and surrounds your vehicle and threatens you, you have a right to flee for your safety.” AP said DeSantis was answering a question about Florida’s policies on protests that block roads and was not referring to Good.