The woman shot and killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis on Wednesday was Renee Nicole Macklin Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who had recently moved to Minnesota.
She was a U.S. citizen born in Colorado and appears to have never been charged with anything involving law enforcement beyond a traffic ticket.
In social media accounts, Macklin Good described herself as a “poet and writer and wife and mom.” She said she was currently “experiencing Minneapolis,” displaying a pride flag emoji on her Instagram account. A profile picture posted to Pinterest shows her smiling and holding a young child against her cheek, along with posts about tattoos, hairstyles and home decorating.
Her ex-husband, who asked not to be named out of concern for the safety of their children, said Macklin Good had just dropped off her 6-year-old son at school Wednesday and was driving home with her current partner when they encountered a group of ICE agents on a snowy street in Minneapolis, where they had moved last year from Kansas City, Missouri.
Video taken by bystanders posted to social media shows an officer approaching her car, demanding she open the door and grabbing the handle. When she begins to pull forward, a different ICE officer standing in front of the vehicle pulls his weapon and immediately fires at least two shots into the vehicle at close range.
In another video taken after the shooting, a distraught woman is seen sitting near the vehicle, wailing, “That’s my wife, I don’t know what to do!”
Calls and messages to Macklin Good’s current partner received no response.
Trump administration officials painted Macklin Good as a domestic terrorist who had attempted to ram federal agents with her car. Her ex-husband said she was no activist and that he had never known her to participate in a protest of any kind.
He described her as a devoted Christian who took part in youth mission trips to Northern Ireland when she was younger. She loved to sing, participating in a chorus in high school and studying vocal performance in college.
The Minneapolis City Council described Good as a resident who was out “caring for her neighbors” when she was killed.
A woman who identified herself as Good’s mother, Donna Ganger, told the Star Tribune that Good was not part of ICE-related protests and called Good “one of the kindest people I’ve ever known.”
“She was extremely compassionate,” Ganger told the publication. “She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being.”
She studied creative writing at Old Dominion University in Virginia and won a prize in 2020 for one of her works, according to a post on the school’s English department Facebook page.
In a statement, Old Dominion University President Brian Hemphill said Good graduated from the school in 2020 with an English degree. He called her killing “yet another clear example that fear and violence have sadly become commonplace in our nation.”
“May Renee’s life be a reminder of what unites us: freedom, love, and peace,” Hemphill said. “My hope is for compassion, healing, and reflection at a time that is becoming one of the darkest and most uncertain periods in our nation’s history.”
Good also hosted a podcast with her second husband, who died in 2023.
Macklin Good had a daughter and her son from her first marriage, who are now ages 15 and 12. Her 6-year-old son was from her second marriage.
Her ex-husband said she had primarily been a stay-at-home mom in recent years but had previously worked as a dental assistant and at a credit union.
In a statement, Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., said she was “heartbroken and angry” about the death of Good, whom she called “a U.S. citizen, a mother, and a Twin Cities resident.”
Videos taken by bystanders with different vantage points and posted to social media show an officer approaching an SUV stopped across the middle of the road, demanding the driver open the door and grabbing the handle. The Honda Pilot begins to pull forward and a different ICE officer standing in front of the vehicle pulls his weapon and immediately fires at least two shots into the vehicle at close range, jumping back as the vehicle moves toward him. It was not immediately clear what happened in the moments before the recordings began.
At a news conference Wednesday night, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said the woman ignored commands to get out of the car she was driving and tried to run over an ICE officer in an “attempt to kill or to cause bodily harm to agents.” That officer was the one who shot the woman, Noem said.
The officer was struck by the vehicle and treated at a hospital before being released, Noem said. She declined to answer a question about whether the officer opened fire before or after being allegedly struck by the vehicle.
“I know you keep asking that, but that doesn’t mean that the FBI is going to give you an answer today. There will be an investigation; we want to make sure that it’s factual,” Noem said.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara briefly described the shooting to reporters.
“This woman was in her vehicle and was blocking the roadway on Portland Avenue. … At some point a federal law enforcement officer approached her on foot and the vehicle began to drive off,” the chief said. “At least two shots were fired. The vehicle then crashed on the side of the roadway.”
The head of Minnesota’s state investigations agency said Thursday that the U.S. attorney’s office has barred it from taking part in the investigation.
Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans said in a statement that after the agency consulted with the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, the U.S. attorney’s office and the FBI following the Good’s shooting, “it was decided that the BCA Force Investigations Unit would conduct a joint investigation with the FBI” and that the “BCA responded promptly to the scene and began coordinating investigative work in good faith. He said the FBI informed the BCA later Wednesday that the U.S. attorney’s office had changed the plan.
“The investigation would now be led solely by the FBI, and the BCA would no longer have access to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation,” Evans wrote.
