Minneapolis Neighborhood Where Alex Pretti Was Killed Plans a Permanent Memorial

Nine months later, the flowers are still there, and now the neighborhood wants something that lasts.

Alex Pretti, 37, was an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital, caring for veterans. On January 24, 2026, he was shot and killed by federal immigration agents near Nicollet Avenue and 26th Street in south Minneapolis, in the Whittier neighborhood known as Eat Street. His death came during a federal immigration enforcement surge in the city, weeks after the separate killing of Renee Good, and it set off protests across Minneapolis and beyond.

Since then, a makeshift memorial of flowers, candles and handwritten signs has stood at the spot. Hundreds of people visited in the first days, many of them leaving notes for a man they had never met. Neighbors have kept it going through a Minnesota winter, a spring thaw and a full summer.

One caretaker, Jadah Green, has cleaned trash, straightened signs and picked up tipped vases nearly every morning. "The memorial and I now have a relationship. And I owe it to the memorial to take care of it," Green told MPR News.

Now the Whittier Alliance, the local neighborhood group, is leading plans for a permanent memorial. It recently held a community meeting where residents wrote ideas on sticky notes, and it is collecting public feedback through its website. Caretakers also planned a community gathering at a nearby yoga studio to talk about the memorial's future.

"People want a memorial that honors who Alex was as a person, as a human being, and they also want something that speaks to the context," said Anna Schmitz, executive director of the Whittier Alliance, according to CBS Minnesota.

That balance is the hard part: a place to remember a nurse who spent his days caring for veterans, and a marker that says plainly how and when he died.

The final design, the exact location and who will oversee the project are still undecided. The current memorial sits on a busy stretch of Nicollet Avenue, with buses and traffic passing a few feet away, so a permanent version may end up nearby rather than on the exact spot.

A separate memorial also stands outside the VA hospital where Pretti worked, put up by colleagues who knew him from the ICU. Renee Good, who was killed by an ICE agent earlier that January, is remembered at a separate memorial not far away.

The shooting remains one of the most debated moments of the federal enforcement push in Minnesota. Supporters of the operation say agents face real danger during arrests. Critics say Pretti's death shows how quickly those operations can turn fatal for people nearby. The questions about what happened that day have not gone away.

For the neighbors on Nicollet Avenue, though, the goal is simpler. They want him remembered as a nurse, a neighbor and a person, long after the last bouquet from January has faded.

Drop a 🙏 to remember Alex Pretti.