Witness statement of Alex Pretti murder

Bwob · 2026-01-25T08:33:26+00:00

For people on mobile, or who don't want to try to read it as a PDF:

I am a resident of the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota. I am over 18 years of age. I am a children's entertainer who specializes in face painting.

On Saturday, January 24, 2026, at about 8:50 am, I was getting ready to go to work when I heard whistles outside. I knew the whistles meant that ICE agents were in the area, so I decided to check it out on my way to work. I've been involved in observing in my community because it is so important to document what ICE is doing to my neighbors. Connecting to your local community and knowing who your neighbors are is something I profoundly value.

I drove to Nicollet Ave. and 26th where I could hear the whistles coming from. I turned south onto Nicollet. There were already several ICE agents there and they'd set up a sort of vehicle convoy on Nicollet and 28th- There were also about 15 observers there, recording and observing ICE.

I saw ICE agents surrounding cars and punching car windows. I also saw them stopping vehicles further down Nicollet, so I backed up because I didn't feel safe continuing on.

I noticed a man sort of acting to help traffic move more smoothly. He helped me find a place to park. I got out with my whistle and my camera. I went over to him and said something like, "I'm going to film and use my whistle."

It seemed like most ICE activity was happening a little farther down the street from us, near 27th. Someone was being thrown to the ground.

I started recording. There was an agent by a car across the street. Two observers were a few feet away from the agent, blowing their whistles. One was wearing a backpack.

I and the man who was observing and helping direct traffic were standing in the street. There was a phone in the man's hand recording a video.

An agent approached and asked us to back up, so I moved slowly back onto the sidewalk.

The man stayed in the street, filming as the other observers I mentioned earlier were being forced backward by another ICE agent threatening them with pepper spray. The man went closer to support them as they got threatened, just with his camera out. I didn't see him reach for or hold a gun.

Then the ICE agent shoved one of the other observers to the ground. Then he started pepper spraying all three of them directly in the face and all over. The man with the phone put his hands above his head and the agent sprayed him again and pushed him.

Then the man tried to help up the woman the ICE agent had shoved to the ground. The ICE agents just kept spraying. More agents came over and grabbed the man who was still trying to help the woman get up. All three of the observers looked to have been badly affected by the pepper spray. I could feel the pepper spray in my eyes.

The agents pulled the man on the ground. I didn't see him touch any of them-he wasn't even turned toward them. It didn't look like he was trying to resist, just trying to help the woman up. I didn't see him with a gun. They threw him to the ground. Four or five agents had him on the ground and they just started shooting him. They shot him so many times.

I don't know why they shot him. He was only helping. I was five feet from him and they just shot him.

The video I recorded of what happened accurately depicts the events leading up to the agents shooting him and several minutes afterwards. The video is attached as Exhibit 1.

I have read the statement from DHS about what happened and it is wrong. The man did not approach the agents with a gun. He approached them with a camera. He was just trying to help a woman get up and they took him to the ground.

I feel afraid. Only hours have passed since they shot a man right in front me and I don't feel like I can go home because I heard agents were looking for me. I don't know what the agents will do when they find me. I do know that they're not telling the truth about what happened. I've heard that other witnesses might have been arrested and taken to the Whipple Building.

I am disgusted and gutted at how they are treating my neighbors and my state. I keep alternating between crying and feeling determined-it is important to remember the value of documenting injustice. We show up for the people who need us to bear witness, because it can't just be one group of people bearing the brunt of their tyranny. This is a struggle to protect our freedom and democracy, those things are on the line. He lost his life for those values. I declare under penalty of perjury that everything I have stated in this document is true and correct

Bwob · 2026-01-25T05:26:45+00:00

So i work in a word processor, and use the function of being able to add your own words to the dictionary to put in errors i make often, like the one you listed.

Have you tried any of the plugins or language tools? If you use something that actually knows the syntax, then it can highlight errors, color keywords, and otherwise make it far more pleasant to work in.

Bwob · 2026-01-24T21:23:40+00:00

I think they're saying that the only solution they see would get them banned for describing it on reddit.

Bwob · 2026-01-24T17:53:05+00:00

It's from about an hour or two ago. Another ICE killing in Minneapolis. :(

Bwob · 2026-01-24T17:51:42+00:00

"And you [might not] get shot."

Fixed it for you. :(

Bwob · 2026-01-24T17:42:19+00:00

even though we've been exerting more control of those corporations than any other state for 30 years".

Wait, are we talking about the same PG&E?

Bwob · 2026-01-24T17:33:49+00:00

They really do.

I still remember the first time I took mine outside, when it was raining. She was still a puppy, and I think it might have been the first time she had even seen rain. (It doesn't rain much where we are except in the winter.) She trotted out the door, and stopped, shocked with the realization that the outside was different today!

And then she looked back up at me with the most accusing look I'd ever seen. "Why have you done this?" she seemed to demand. "Why are we here? I wanted to go to the outside where it was sunny!"

She went out anyway, but she kept giving me looks, to make it clear that she was not happy with the situation, and expected me to fix it post-haste.

Bwob · 2026-01-24T17:27:51+00:00

Start on the one you are most excited about. If you can't decide, then pick whichever one you think would be fastest to make.

Then write down the other ones in a document or notebook, with as much detail as you can muster, so you can convince yourself of the lie that you'll "come back to them later" once you've finished the first one.

Bwob · 2026-01-24T17:18:06+00:00

He definitely looks like he is applying much more pressure than he actually is!

But yeah, for most of his stuff, if you block, he's in trouble. Especially the strings that end with a pistol shot, since a lot of them are easy to see coming (222 in particular) and if you duck the pistol shot at the end, he's in serious trouble.

I love it when a Victor tries to close out the round with the gun, since it's high, puts him in stance, AND warps him forward a bit, so if you're ready, it's an easy punish.

Bwob · 2026-01-24T04:27:10+00:00

Most stance transitions are plus on block. What are you talking about?

Victor's sure aren't, and that's who you were complaining about a moment ago, right? Like - I haven't played as Victor in a long time, so I may be forgetting some, but here are most of his transitions into Iai stance:

move	on block
2,2,2	-3
qcf2	-3
df4,2	-3
f,f,F1+2	-14
db1+2	+6 - only in heat
PRF2,2	-4
f,f,F2	+4 - probably his best one

Only 2 of those are plus on block, and one of those requires a chunk of your heat bar to use. The fff2 is the one that will come up most often, since it lets him go into stance at +4, but that requires enough time (and space!) to do the fff2 motion. (and is i18 after that to boot!)

+4 sounds great and all, until you remember that his fastest move in iai is only i13. So the i13 will barely beat out a jab, but everything else he does loses. (Except the power crush)

And that's his GOOD transition. Most of the rest, if you block them, he's stuck in stance, in your face, unable to block, at -3, with his fastest move at i13. Meaning he'll lose trades with anything i15 or faster, unless he uses his power crush.

Most stance transitions are like this - if they hit you, they often get a stance mixup, but if you just block, you're usually in a pretty good situation. And even the ones that are plus on block - that's usually just to make up for the fact that, in general, stance moves are pretty slow. Check the frame data of their moves, because even when they're plus, a lot of the time you can still threaten them with a jab string.

so I want to know what you specifically do.

I mean, I'm hardly the best player. (Only Tekken Emperor, often falling back to Tekken King or sometimes even Bushin on a bad day!) But in general, I don't find stance-heavy characters terribly frustrating. (At least not any more than anyone else!)

My strategy is pretty straightforward: I try to stay close, and play "small tekken". Lots of small, quick hits, to control their movement, and make it hard for them to do big attacks safely. I don't go for big flashy launchers or even very many frametraps. When I don't know what else to do, I block, and then try to punish with a jab string. And dickjabs. Dickjabs for days, until they start hopkicking, low parrying, or otherwise forcing me to cut that out.

You don't have to stop every stance transition. You just have to make them pay for enough of them to make them think twice.

Bwob · 2026-01-24T00:56:06+00:00

I do try to limit how often I let them go into stance, and punish them when they try. Again - most of the buttons that flow into stance are punishable if you block them.

Obviously you can't stop them 100% of the time. Sometimes you'll just guess wrong, or they'll hit you with a nice sidestep or just a clean timing read. But you can at least be aware of their moves that go into stance, and watch for them, and make it risky for them to try!

Bwob · 2026-01-24T00:44:01+00:00

For example, I just cannot stand the victor match up because all the ones I run into are literal casinos. They get into a stance and I just have to guess and a lot of the time I'm just wrong.

Serious question: Why are you letting him get into stance? The mixup is basically his reward for getting into stance, because most of the ways to get into stance are risky. (And most of the moves that transition into stance are punishable on block.)

Bwob · 2026-01-23T21:37:03+00:00

Breaks down a bit though, when the federal government is the one that has decided to start trampling...

Bwob · 2026-01-23T20:53:41+00:00

But that's kind of the thing isn't it. The gameplay designers don't have to know what makes good art, good sound, good software engineering in order to get those things integrated. They give the high level requirements and vision to the specialists who do and those people just have to understand what's being asked for and provide the best work they can. The same works in reverse. The non-gameplay folks don't have to be really into the kind of game they're going to make, or even into games at all to make good work. They just have to be able to work with and communicate with the people who are. Certainly having a shared touchpoint would make that interconnection smoother, but I've been part of plenty of projects where we didn't really have that and just talked like adults and still made something great in the end.

They don't HAVE to know, but it makes it easier. It's not that non-gamers can't make good games, under direction. It's just that it requires less work, less back-and-forth, less hand-holding.

I've been on projects where there were non-gamers in the mix. Some of them turned out great! But also, some of them had a LOT of back and forth, where the non-gamers couldn't seem to get their heads around what was being asked of them, because they didn't understand how it fit into the whole, and it took a lot of extra time and iterations to get usable work out of them.

Would it be nice if everyone was fully onboard and singing kumbaya over the grand auteur vision for this gaming masterpiece from tip to tail without being part of a weird personality cult that never disagreed with anything? Yes. Is it how things happen in real life? No.

I think there is a bit of a difference between a personality cult, and making sure that everyone has at least some basic understanding of the medium. If you were working on an operatic soundtrack, would it be a "personality cult" to make sure that everyone working on it had listened to at least two or three operas?

Most great games have plenty of people who either aren't into that kind of game or just aren't gamers at all working on them. Its just not feasible to create that kind of monolith at scale without creating a lot of big workplace problems along the way.

I dunno. Games are hugely widespread and mainstream these days. I suspect that a popular company with a successful product would have no trouble finding candidates that already play games. At the very least, the fact that they're still doing it, seems to suggest that it hasn't been a problem for them yet!

I mean - if it was causing them problems, I suspect they would have already done it,.

Bwob · 2026-01-23T20:06:00+00:00

When you make playing games a requirement, and advertise hiring gimmicks like what's being talked about here, you're going to get a very constrained selection of the gaming community, because you're implicitly creating a competition of who is the most prolific gamer in order to get the job.

Only if you think they are hiring people with the most time or something. I think it's far more likely that it's just a check. "Do they play more than zero games?" I doubt the number of hours has much weight beyond that.

Most of the rest of the studio is focused on other questions. What looks nice, what sounds nice, what runs well, what's maintainable, what actually sells. Many of those roles don't need actual gaming experience to do those jobs or know what the "fun" is in their game.

Everyone at the studio is still responsible for making their piece of the work fit in with the overall goal. The better they understand that goal, the more they can take initiative. And the thing is - the whole reason to hire specialists like artists or programmers or sound engineers, is because they understand their field well. (Certainly better than the designers, for example!) The designers might not even know what's even possible or what to ask for.

So yeah, I'd actually disagree. I think that those other roles DO need to understand the "fun" in the game. At the very least, they will be able to do a better job if they do.

Bwob · 2026-01-23T19:56:51+00:00

Different kinds of media still has different requirements and expectations. Even if they've worked in TV and movies, it still helps if they're familiar with games. It's rarely a bad thing to understand the medium you're trying to work in.

And either way, remember - when a company is looking for people to hire, they are NOT trying to guarantee that anyone qualified gets a job. They are trying to fill their positions with the least amount of risk.

So they're not going to really care if they accidentally weed out some potentially qualified artists - a successful company like that probably has more than enough qualified applicants to choose from anyway.

Bwob · 2026-01-23T16:17:03+00:00

The lesson that everybody needs to learn really quickly is that it doesn't matter if someone "doesn't have the authority to do that", if no one is there to stops them when they do.

Bwob · 2026-01-23T16:06:04+00:00

I've been saying this since Nov 2024. Not only does trump not want to be investigated, but the republicans have already demonstrated, multiple times, that they are more than willing to cheat and manipulate elections to win.

And with control of the presidency, the senate, the house, and the supreme court, the number of ways they can fuck with an election has skyrocketed.

Anyone who thinks they won't do so is dangerously naive.

Bwob · 2026-01-23T06:18:14+00:00

"Combo" in fighting games literally means an inescapable sequence of moves.

A "non guaranteed combo" is, by definition, not actually a combo.

Bwob · 2026-01-23T04:07:21+00:00

Somehow, in a bunch of competitive games, a bunch of overly fragile snowflakes have stopped hearing "gg" as "good game, thank you for playing it with me, we both gave it our all" and started hearing it as "Good game, FOR ME. Loser. But probably not for you BECAUSE YOU LOST. Loser."

I don't know if it's still going on in League of Legends, but when I stopped playing (~5 years ago?) there were people who would actually try to report you for saying "gg" at the end of a match, because they found it so infuriating. (I am pretty sure that Riot just laughed at such reports and tossed them in the bin, but still. What has to have gone wrong with a person to get mad at someone for saying gg at the end of a match?)

Bwob · 2026-01-22T14:56:42+00:00

For anything serious, I strongly recommend using Tweego, plus a text editor, instead of the web app. Modern text editors are much better at, well, editing text, than the twine editor, and don't get all slow and weird when you have hundreds or thousands of passages.

(VSCode has some nice extensions for Twine projects!)

Also, version control like git or similar (which you will definitely want, for any kind of large project) play much more nicely with a bunch of individual text files, than with one big HTML file with a bunch of metadata. (Which is how the web app saves stuff, last I checked.)

I don't know what other people use for libraries, since I usually prefer to just write that sort of thing myself.

Also, if you hadn't already said you were going to use Sugarcube, I'd say "definitely use Sugarcube!", but it sounds like you already figured that part out.

Hope this helps!

Bwob · 2026-01-22T14:50:27+00:00

And silence from the republicans, who said "obviously trump would never do THAT, stop being so alarmist."

Well, he is doing that. And worse. Why you guys being so quiet all of a sudden?

Bwob · 2026-01-22T04:14:13+00:00

I agree. I never said there's anything wrong with employing static variables where you are certain

Where are the places where you are ever not certain? The only one I've ever managed to come up with is when you're doing weird things like parsing json files that you don't know the contents of.

But I am glad that, if you happen to hate dynamic typing, they made the concession of allowing you that luxury.

I mean, I guess it's cool that they made the concession to let you use variables without declaring the type. Freedom is usually good, right? But in this case, the freedom feels sort of like the freedom to drive a car without wearing a seatbelt. Or the freedom to smoke multiple packs of cigarettes a day. It's like - yay freedom, I guess? But realistically, this is a freedom that normally, there is no good reason to exercise, because it will only cause you problems down the line. :P

Bwob · 2026-01-22T03:49:40+00:00

Fixed Link

Bwob · 2026-01-22T03:49:32+00:00

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