Did DHS post stock photo claiming it was Alex Pretti's gun? What we know

In January 2026, after at least one federal agent shot and killed 37-year-old Veterans Affairs ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, the Department of Homeland Security published (archived) an image on X that it said showed a semiautomatic handgun the man carried when he approached officers.

Following the shooting, a claim (archived) circulated online that the image of the handgun the DHS shared actually appeared online before the shooting or was a stock photo (archived) that the DHS falsely presented as showing a gun belonging to Pretti. One Facebook user wrote, "The image they say is a pic of his gun was posted on Reddit 5 days ago!!."

Claims about the image the DHS shared also circulated on X (archived), Threads (archived) and Reddit (archived). Snopes readers wrote in asking about the claims.

We found no evidence the image the DHS shared circulated online before the Jan. 24 shooting or that it was a pre-existing stock image. 

Claims that the image circulated before Jan. 24 appeared to come from a misreading of Google's reverse image search results. According to further reverse images searches, the image did not appear before Jan. 24 as a pre-existing stock image.

We asked the DHS to supply the original image of the gun or its metadata to verify information about when and where it was taken. Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement, "Claims the gun image is doctored are false and ridiculous. Please see our post that contains the original photo." The DHS did not provide the original image or any metadata; because of this, we've left this claim unrated.

Inspecting DHS photo

The claim that the image the DHS shared circulated online before the shooting appeared to come from a screenshot (archived) of Google reverse image search results shared on Jan 24. This service allows users to search for other instances of existing images online.

Some users shared a screenshot of Google's search results and pointed out that one result for the DHS image was a Reddit post dated "5 days ago."

(X user @CheriJacobus)

However, as another social media user (archived) pointed out, people sharing the screenshot as evidence the image was circulating before the shooting appeared to be misreading Google's search results. In that particular case, someone had posted the DHS image in a Reddit thread (archived) created on Jan. 19 — five days before the shooting. The Google results appeared to show the thread's creation date rather than the date the user uploaded the image in a comment on that thread  — which, according to the comment's time stamp, was around 11:34 a.m. Eastern time on Jan. 24, after news of the shooting broke.

Further searches on Google revealed other examples of the search engine showing copies of the image with dates that appeared to suggest that users had posted them before Jan. 24 — at least at first glance. However, clicking on these results showed that the dates did not actually correspond to when the image was uploaded, but instead reflected the creation dates of forum posts or social media pages that featured the image only after the shooting.

(Google)

Google dated one result on a message board called Pakistan Defence Forum from "2 years ago." However, the time stamp on the actual post that contained the image showed the user posted it on Jan. 25, the day after DHS shared it.

The search engine also included in its results a posting of the image that it said was from "2 months ago." The link led to an unrelated post (archived) on a Facebook page. The Facebook page did share (archived) the DHS image — on Jan. 25.

Wider searches of other reverse image search engines like Bing, Yandex and TinEye did not reveal credible posts of the image online before Jan. 24 (archived, archived, archived).

DHS claimed Pretti 'approached' agents with gun

The DHS said in its statement on X on Jan. 24 that Pretti approached federal agents with the gun shown in the image and "violently resisted" attempts to disarm him, resulting in an "armed struggle." Witness video published online appeared to contradict the DHS' account of events.

The Associated Press reported that Pretti's family members said he owned a handgun and had a license for concealed carry but that they did not know him to carry the weapon with him. Minneapolis police Chief Brian O'Hara said during a news conference on Jan. 24 that Pretti was "a lawful gun owner with a permit to carry."

The DHS said an agent who shot Pretti did so while "fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers," a near-identical phrase to what the department used after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote on X (archived) on Jan. 25 that a federal investigation into Pretti's shooting was ongoing.