I grew up with Alex Pretti | The VergeSkip to main contentThe homepageThe VergeThe Verge logo.The VergeThe Verge logo.TechReviewsScienceEntertainmentAIPolicyHamburger Navigation ButtonThe homepageThe VergeThe Verge logo.Hamburger Navigation ButtonNavigation DrawerThe VergeThe Verge logo.Login / Sign UpcloseCloseSearchTechExpandAmazonAppleFacebookGoogleMicrosoftSamsungBusinessSee all techGadgetsExpandLaptopsPhonesTVsHeadphonesSpeakersWearablesSee all gadgetsReviewsExpandSmart Home ReviewsPhone ReviewsTablet ReviewsHeadphone ReviewsSee all reviewsAIExpandOpenAIAnthropicSee all AIVerge ShoppingExpandBuying GuidesDealsGift GuidesSee all shoppingPolicyExpandAntitrustPoliticsLawSecuritySee all policyScienceExpandSpaceEnergyEnvironmentHealthSee all scienceEntertainmentExpandTV ShowsMoviesAudioSee all entertainmentGamingExpandXboxPlayStationNintendoSee all gamingStreamingExpandDisneyHBONetflixYouTubeCreatorsSee all streamingTransportationExpandElectric CarsAutonomous CarsRide-sharingScootersSee all transportationFeaturesVerge VideoExpandTikTokYouTubeInstagramPodcastsExpandDecoderThe VergecastVersion HistoryNewslettersExpandThe Verge DailyInstallerVerge DealsNotepadOptimizerRegulatorThe StepbackArchivesStoreSubscribeFacebookThreadsInstagramYoutubeRSSThe VergeThe Verge logo.I grew up with Alex PrettiComments DrawerCommentsLoading commentsGetting the conversation ready...PolicyClosePolicyPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All PolicyI grew up with Alex PrettiThe kind-hearted ICU nurse shot by ICE agents was my childhood best friend.by Kristen RadtkeCloseKristen RadtkeCreative DirectorPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Kristen RadtkeJan 27, 2026, 4:39 PM UTCLinkSharePolicyClosePolicyPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All PolicyI grew up with Alex PrettiThe kind-hearted ICU nurse shot by ICE agents was my childhood best friend.by Kristen RadtkeCloseKristen RadtkeCreative DirectorPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Kristen RadtkeJan 27, 2026, 4:39 PM UTCLinkShareKristen RadtkeCloseKristen RadtkeCreative DirectorPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Kristen Radtke is creative director, managing art and design for The Verge. Since joining in 2021, her work has won ASME design and American Illustration awards.LinkShareThe day Alex Pretti was shot 10 times in the street by federal agents, I was delivering a eulogy for my grandfather, who died the way we’re supposed to: old, asleep, surrounded by family. Because it’s my job to coordinate visuals for this website, I locked myself in a bathroom stall, watched a video of the shooting twice, and emailed a photographer, asking if he could get onto the streets and start documenting what was happening in Minneapolis.As I reviewed photos of protesters and tear gas in the wake of his death, I didn’t realize, in the hours before his name was released to the public, that the man millions of people had seen lying facedown on the pavement from multiple angles of eyewitness video was my childhood best friend.We have become familiar with being barraged by videos of people we do not know getting detained and ripped from their families and beaten by agents whose salaries we pay. As social media does its work putting bits and pieces together about each day of unfolding tragedy, more and more of us will realize that those pieces belong to someone we know.Alex and I grew up across the street from each other in a quiet neighborhood in Green Bay, Wisconsin, a town maniacal about its football team and without much else to do. The street we lived on had recently been a field, now populated with a smattering of three-bedroom houses rapidly constructed in a treeless subdivision. I met Alex when he was three years old and I was four. Our family’s lives were exceedingly visible to each other, without fences or much foliage, and we knew the comings and goings of one another’s households.Alex was an easy playmate: generous, curious, sweet. His mother always ensured he had a tidy haircut and a clean room. He had a little sister. He told me the truth about Santa, and I told him the truth about where babies come from.We rollerbladed and had sleepovers, excitedly dragging our sleeping bags across the street from one house to the other. We built palatial forts in the snowdrifts after the plows went through. Lawn sprinklers in summers became portals to different realms and time periods; we ran through the strands of water with towels tied around our necks as capes. When Alex had his bedroom window open, I could hear him singing all the way from my own open window. His voice was operatic and strong, carrying above the suburban drone of leafblowers and lawnmowers. He loved mandarin oranges and macaroni and cheese, and we agreed it was especially pleasing when all the food on our plates was orange.Over the last few days, I’ve seen a lot of posts on social media about how you don’t have to watch the video, about how it’s okay to protect yourself from it, because we don’t need to watch another public execution. But when an Associated Press journalist called his parents after their son was shot, they hadn’t heard the news. The journalist sent them the video, and they said it looked like their son.There is something destabilizing about having known someone only as a child and then hearing they were gunned down in the street. The person you see in your mind lying in that street is still a child. I’m sure his mother feels that way, too, or she sees him at every age all at once, including those he did not live to see.After Alex was wrestled down to the ground, and after a federal agent pulled the trigger and Alex went still, nine more shots were fired into his body. I keep reading reports that there was a struggle before the first gunshot, but all I see is a person trying to keep his head off the ground while seven masked men surround and beat him. Certainly, through his training as an ICU nurse, he knew that it was important to protect his head. Once in the old neighborhood, when he was seven or eight, he’d fallen off his bike, his helmet splitting cleanly in half like a cantaloupe. He showed the halves to all the neighbor kids as a way to warn them to never ride without one.The lies being told about him by America’s most powerful people are flagrantly incongruous to anyone who watches the videos. He doesn’t reach for his weapon at his waistband, which he had the legal right to carry, and which an agent removed from him before they killed him. He was not approaching the officers when they pepper-sprayed him and tackled him to the ground. He was helping up a woman who those same agents had just shoved to the curb.My family moved away as I started high school, and Alex’s mother asked to talk with me before we left. She wanted to understand how she could stay close to her son and keep him safe while still allowing him the freedom to grow as he got older. Was it okay if she asked him to check in when he went to a new location with friends, she wondered. Would those friends make fun of him, or would they recognize that he was loved?The other video that’s gone most viral of Alex shows him providing a final salute for an ICU patient at the VA hospital where he worked. Alex speaks in a low, reverent tone before a flag-draped body, demonstrating the same compassion we saw in the footage of him helping a woman who’d been pushed to the ground by federal agents. It’s the same caring tenor of his voice in his last words: Are you okay?Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Kristen RadtkeCloseKristen RadtkeCreative DirectorPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Kristen RadtkePolicyClosePolicyPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All PolicyMore in PolicyPornhub will block new users in the UK next monthAmazon will pay customers $309 million to settle ‘no hassle returns’ lawsuitTruth and AI in MinneapolisAll rise for JudgeGPTTikTok is still down, here are all the latest updatesX faces EU investigation over Grok’s sexualized deepfakesPornhub will block new users in the UK next monthEmma Roth30 minutes agoAmazon will pay customers $309 million to settle ‘no hassle returns’ lawsuitEmma RothTwo hours agoTruth and AI in MinneapolisDavid Pierce1:42 PM UTCAll rise for JudgeGPTLauren Feiner11:30 AM UTCTikTok is still down, here are all the latest updatesRichard Lawler5 seconds agoX faces EU investigation over Grok’s sexualized deepfakesEmma RothJan 26Advertiser Content FromThis is the title for the native adTop Stories11:30 AM UTCAll rise for JudgeGPT12:00 PM UTCRoland’s TR-1000 is the ultimate drum machine2:00 PM UTCThe Samsung Trifold will cost nearly three grandTwo hours agoYahoo Scout looks like a more web-friendly take on AI searchJan 26Payment processors were against CSAM until Grok started making it5 seconds agoTikTok US is mostly back up and runningThe VergeThe Verge logo.FacebookThreadsInstagramYoutubeRSSContactTip UsCommunity GuidelinesArchivesAboutEthics StatementHow We Rate and Review ProductsCookie SettingsTerms of UsePrivacy NoticeCookie PolicyLicensing FAQAccessibilityPlatform Status© 2026 Vox Media, LLC. 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Kristen Radtke’s poignant piece, “I Grew Up with Alex Pretti,” is a devastating exploration of identity, loss, and the unsettling reality of surveillance in America, framed through the lens of a personal, profoundly unsettling connection. The narrative centers around Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse shot nine times by federal agents in Minneapolis, and Radtke’s subsequent realization of his identity as a childhood friend. The essay meticulously details the jarring juxtaposition of knowing someone intimately and then witnessing their public, brutal execution.

Radtke’s strength lies in her ability to convey the sheer disorientation of this experience. The initial shock is palpable – the journalist’s disbelief that the man they’d seen on video, lying facedown, was a former acquaintance. This disorientation is amplified by the repeated visual encounter: the videos of Alex being shot, the images juxtaposed with his compassionate care as an ICU nurse, a final salute offered to a dying patient. This layering of imagery underscores the tragedy of a life cut short and the unsettling feeling of being complicit in his demise simply through access to these images.

The essay’s central argument revolves around the insidious nature of public observation. Radtke highlights how the proliferation of surveillance—documented through countless videos—dulls our capacity for genuine empathy and understanding. The reader is forced to confront the uncomfortable truth that these tragedies, once confined to distant news reports, are increasingly personal. The ease with which the public can consume footage of such violence doesn’t foster compassion; it instead breeds a detached, almost voyeuristic, engagement with suffering. The repeated mention of “the person you see in your mind lying in that street is still a child” emphasizes this dehumanizing effect, clinging to the individual despite the devastating circumstances.

Furthermore, Radtke adeptly utilizes细节 – specific details like Alex’s operatic voice, the cantaloupe-like split of his helmet, and his concern for his friends’ safety – to ground the abstract horror in a tangible, human experience. These details transform Alex from a faceless statistic into a recognizable, lovable figure, making the narrative’s core message all the more impactful. The act of communicating with Alex’s parents, receiving the video to confirm their son’s identity, is a particularly poignant detail, highlighting the desperation and fragility of connection in the face of overwhelming injustice.

The essay also subtly critiques the American tendency to reduce complex events to easily digestible images. It implicitly accuses the public of prioritizing spectacle over genuine understanding, demonstrating how the immediate availability of video footage can impede critical reflection and compassionate response. Radtke isn't simply narrating an event; she's exposing a societal vulnerability—our susceptibility to manufactured narratives and the erosion of empathy in an age of ubiquitous surveillance. The careful layering of Alex’s actions, both as a caregiver and as a victim, underlines the inherent contradiction at the heart of the situation, solidifying the enduring impact of Radtke's piece.