Renee Good was a U.S. citizen born in Colorado who, according to the Associated Press, apparently had no criminal record beyond a single traffic ticket. Trump administration officials characterized her as a domestic terrorist, a description that state and local officials in Minneapolis and protesters have rejected.
The wife of Renee Good, the 37-year-old woman shot and killed by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis, issued her first public statement Friday, describing the couple as having stopped to support their neighbors on the day of the shooting and memorializing her wife as a person of uncommon warmth.
“We had whistles. They had guns,” Becca Good wrote in a statement provided to Minnesota Public Radio.
Renee Good was killed Wednesday after three Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers surrounded her Honda Pilot SUV on a snowy street a few blocks from the couple’s home. Video taken by bystanders shows an officer approaching the SUV, which was stopped across the middle of the road, demanding the driver open the door and grabbing the handle. The vehicle then began to move forward. A different ICE officer standing in front of it pulled his weapon and fired at least two shots at close range, according to the Associated Press.
Trump administration officials characterized Renee Good as a domestic terrorist who tried to run over an officer with her vehicle. State and local officials in Minneapolis, as well as protesters, rejected that characterization.
Renee Good was a U.S. citizen born in Colorado who apparently had no criminal record beyond a single traffic ticket, the AP reported. Her ex-husband, who asked not to be named out of concern for the safety of his children, told the AP he had never known her to participate in a protest of any kind.
Becca Good’s statement offered no additional detail about the circumstances of the shooting. Instead, it focused on her wife’s character and faith.
“Renee sparkled. She literally sparkled,” Becca Good wrote. “I mean, she didn’t wear glitter but I swear she had sparkles coming out of her pores. All the time. You might think it was just my love talking but her family said the same thing. Renee was made of sunshine.”
Becca Good said the couple had previously lived in Kansas City, Missouri, and had settled in Minneapolis after an “extended road trip,” drawn by a sense among Twin Cities residents that “they were looking out for each other.”
Renee Good described herself on social media as a “poet and writer and wife and mom.” The couple was raising a 6-year-old son together; Renee Good also had two now-teenage children from a previous marriage.
“We were raising our son to believe that no matter where you come from or what you look like, all of us deserve compassion and kindness,” Becca Good wrote. “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. That the people who did this had fear and anger in their hearts, and we need to show them a better way.”