cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/59374630

Illustration by M.J. Hiblen

I grew up with Alex Pretti - The kind-hearted ICU nurse shot by federal agents was my childhood best friend.

After Alex was wrestled down to the ground, and after a federal agent pulled the trigger and Alex went still, nine more shots were fired into his body. I keep reading reports that there was a struggle before the first gunshot, but all I see is a person trying to keep his head off the ground while seven masked men surround and beat him. Certainly, through his training as an ICU nurse, he knew that it was important to protect his head. Once in the old neighborhood, when he was seven or eight, he’d fallen off his bike, his helmet splitting cleanly in half like a cantaloupe. He showed the halves to all the neighbor kids as a way to warn them to never ride without one.

  • pelespirit@sh.itjust.worksOPMEnglish
    9·
    17 days ago

    Family of ‘perfectly healthy’ asylum-seeker who died in ICE custody demand answers: ‘His story cannot end here’

    The family of a Haitian asylum seeker who died mysteriously last month while in ICE detention is demanding to know what happened to the “remarkably healthy” 41-year-old.

    New Jersey resident Jean Wilson Brutus – known to friends as Wilson – was picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on December 11 and taken to Delaney Hall, a troubled facility in Newark operated by the GEO Group, the nation’s largest private prison company.

    Within 24 hours of his arrival, Brutus “experienced a medical emergency,” according to a news release ICE issued at the time under the headline, “Criminal illegal alien passes away at University Hospital following medical emergency at Delaney Hall Detention Facility.” He was taken by ambulance to a hospital, and pronounced dead the following day, the agency said.

    ICE attributed Brutus’s death to “natural causes,” but provided no further details, other than the fact that Brutus “had no signs of distress during intake nor a medical history of cardiovascular issues.”