On Jan. 24, 2026, Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old American citizen and ICU nurse, died at the hands of federal immigration agents in Minneapolis. Videos of the killing shared across social media showed federal agents firing at least 10 shots at Pretti over the course of five seconds.
The shooting was the second time a federal agent fatally shot someone in Minneapolis since the start of 2026. A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent identified as Jonathan Ross killed Renee Nicole Good on Jan. 7.
In the wake of Pretti's death, posts on social media claimed the federal agent who shot him was a man named Evan Kilgore. The posts included a photo of a smiling man wearing a black T-shirt next to an image of a masked federal agent. Snopes readers wrote in to ask whether the claim was true.
The claim was false. At the time of publication, the Border Patrol agents who fired their guns had not been publicly identified, and we found no evidence linking anyone named Evan Kilgore to the shooting.
The image of the unmasked man showed conservative commentator Evan Kilgore, whose X account bio describes him as an "American nationalist."
Snopes contacted Kilgore via X, where he has more than 180,000 followers. As of this writing, his profile picture matched the image of the man shared in the social media posts.
Kilgore told Snopes via direct message that he has never worked in law enforcement, including for ICE or Border Patrol. He also provided documentation showing he could not have been the agent who shot Pretti, including two credit card purchases he made Jan. 24 — one in the morning in Indiana and one in the afternoon in Ohio — and time-stamped footage of him leaving his house 30 minutes after the shooting.
Some social media users have identified the masked man featured in posts about Kilgore as the agent who fatally shot Pretti. However, that identification was unconfirmed at the time of publication. A comparison of the images included in the social media post also suggested the two men do not share the same facial features.
On Jan. 25, Kilgore posted a statement on his X account denying that he was the individual who shot Pretti and said he would pursue a defamation case against
Snopes reached out to the user named in Kilgore's post for a response, but had not heard back at the time of publication. We could not confirm whether that user originally shared the claim because the account was set to private.
We contacted the Department of Homeland Security and ICE to ask if they employed a person named Evan Kilgore, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.