The death of Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman who was shot and killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis on Wednesday, has sparked national outcry.
Good, who was a U.S. citizen, was a legal observer of federal actions in the city and was not a target for arrest by ICE agents, city leaders said.
CBS Minnesota reports Good was a mother of three who had recently moved to the area with her 6-year-old son and partner.
Her ex-husband told The Associated Press that she had just dropped the child off at school and was driving home with her partner when she encountered the ICE agents.
Here’s what we know so far about Good and the fatal shooting.
Good recently moved to Minneapolis
Born in Colorado, Renee Good described herself in the bio of her Instagram profile as a “poet and writer and wife and mom” who was currently “experiencing Minneapolis.”
Her mother, Donna Ganger, told the Minnesota Star Tribune that the family was notified of the death late Wednesday morning. Ganger told the newspaper that her daughter wasn’t part of a protest and said her daughter “was probably terrified.”
“Renee was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known,” Ganger told the Tribune. “She was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being.”
Good was widowed when her husband Timmy Ray Macklin Jr. died in 2023 at age 36, the Tribune reported. He was her second husband and the father of her young son, according to the AP, which reported that Good had two older children, a 12-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter, with her first husband.
Good earned a degree in English from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, according to the school. She graduated in December 2020. Earlier that year, Good received a poetry prize from the university, its English department announced in a Facebook post at the time. The post said Good studied creative writing and hosted a podcast.
“It is with great sadness that Old Dominion University mourns the loss of one of our own, Renee (Macklin) Good,” said Brian Hemphill, the university’s president, in a statement. Hemphill described her death as a “tragic killing” and “yet another clear example that fear and violence have sadly become commonplace in our nation.”
Her ex-husband told the AP that Good had worked as a dental assistant and at a credit union before becoming a stay-at-home mother in recent years.
AP also reports it appears she was never charged with anything involving law enforcement beyond a traffic ticket.
“Devastated for that whole family”
Joan Rose, who was Good’s former neighbor in Kansas City, Missouri, told CBS affiliate KCTV that Good’s family had lived across the street from her until December 2024. Rose said she didn’t know the family well but called them “lovely neighbors.” Good had lived in the Waldo neighborhood with her partner, young son and dogs, and Rose said the two older children routinely visited them.
Rose said she thought Good’s family had planned to move to Canada when they left Missouri last year.
“I heard they were moving to Canada because of the politics here,” she told KCTV. “I had thought about them sometimes, you know, passing by their house thinking, ‘Oh, I hope they’re OK in Canada, you know, I hope that they’re living, you know, a good life and that they’re, they’re worry free.’ And this is just the opposite of that. So, I’m just devastated for that whole family.”
A GoFundMe campaign established in the wake of the shooting is asking the public to “support the wife and son of Renee Good as they grapple with the devastating loss of their wife and mother.”
“Renee was pure sunshine, pure, love,” reads the fundraiser’s description. “She will be desperately missed.”
The campaign has raised nearly $500,000 as of Thursday morning.
A community vigil held for Good in Minneapolis Wednesday night drew a large crowd of attendees, many of whom shared emotional and frustrated remarks about the latest ICE operations that have recently ramped up across the region, CBS Minnesota reported. Protests also took place in other cities around the U.S.
The agent involved in the shooting was part of a surge of roughly 2,000 federal agents and officers the Trump administration recently deployed to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in a response to both immigration and Minnesota’s fraud scandal.
Shooting captured on video
Police responded to a call reporting the shooting, which happened in a neighborhood in south Minneapolis, at about 9:30 a.m. local time Wednesday, according to the city. When officers arrived, they found that a woman, later identified as Good, had been shot in the head. She was rushed by firefighters to a Minneapolis hospital, where she later died, the city said.
Federal officials, including Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, characterized the shooting as an act of self-defense on the part of the ICE agent who fired the weapon when the driver “attacked them and those surrounding them and attempted to run them over and ram them with her vehicle.” However, numerous witnesses and local leaders are questioning that account.
Multiple videos have circulated online of the incident, which show the woman in a maroon Honda Pilot SUV on a residential street when an ICE agent approached and addressed her through the window of her vehicle. Several other agents stood nearby.
In one of the videos, an officer can be heard telling the woman to “get out of the f****** car” before reaching for the Honda’s door handle. At that point, the Honda is seen backing up as another agent steps in front of the car. The Honda then begins to drive away, and the agent in front of it fires his weapon into the car. Whether the agent was hit by the car, as federal officials have said, is not clear based on the videos. They show the agent move to the side of the SUV as he fires several more shots, and the car moves forward down the street before crashing into another car.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said it was originally assigned to investigate Good’s death jointly with FBI, but the state agency has since withdrawn from the case and alleged federal authorities restricted its access to evidence, CBS Minnesota reported.