The sudden death of Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old ICU nurse shot during a confrontation with federal agents in Minneapolis, has left a city in mourning and a family shattered. In the days since the January 20, 2026 incident, new layers of grief have emerged, most powerfully through a public message shared by his ex-wife, Jessica Morales. Her words—raw, loving, and unflinching—have spread rapidly online, offering a deeply personal perspective on a man whose final moments have been dissected in headlines, videos, and official statements.

Jessica and Alex were married for six years before separating amicably in 2023. They remained close, co-parenting their two young children—a 9-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old son—and often described their post-marriage relationship as “best friends who just couldn’t make the romance work.” Friends say Alex was a devoted father who never missed a school event, a soccer game, or a bedtime story, even during long hospital shifts. Jessica, a high school teacher, was often seen cheering alongside him from the sidelines.

Her message, posted to a private Facebook group before being shared publicly with permission from close family, begins with heartbreak and ends with fierce love. “I don’t even know how to write this,” she started. “Alex is gone. The father of my babies, the man who held my hand through the hardest nights of my life, was taken from us in a way I still can’t comprehend. I saw the videos. I heard the commands. I watched him fall holding nothing but his phone. And I keep asking—why?”

Jessica described the last time she spoke to Alex—two days before the shooting. He had called to say goodnight to the children and told her he was worried about “strange activity” in the neighborhood. “He said there were unmarked cars and men in tactical gear watching houses,” she wrote. “He was nervous but trying to stay calm for the kids. I told him to be careful. I never thought that would be our last conversation.”

She addressed the official narrative directly. “They say he was armed. They say he refused commands. But I knew Alex. He was gentle. He was the man who cried when our daughter got her first stitches, who talked down anxious patients in the ICU, who never raised his voice even when he was furious. He wasn’t perfect, but he wasn’t violent. And he certainly wasn’t stupid enough to point a gun at federal agents.”

Jessica shared that Alex had recently started carrying his phone on a lanyard around his neck so he could record anything suspicious in the neighborhood. “He told me it was for protection—not to fight anyone, but to document if something went wrong. That’s what he was doing when they shot him. He was trying to record the truth. And they killed him for it.”

Her message also touched on the toll of the past week. “My kids keep asking when Daddy’s coming home. I don’t know how to answer. I show them pictures of him smiling at their school plays, holding them when they were babies, and I tell them Daddy loved them more than anything. But how do you explain that someone took him away forever?”

She did not call for violence or vengeance. Instead, she asked for accountability. “I want the body camera footage released. I want every angle of those videos examined by independent investigators. I want to know why trained agents couldn’t de-escalate a situation with a man holding a phone. I want my children to grow up knowing their father’s death was not in vain—that it forced change, forced better training, forced someone to admit when lethal force was wrong.”

Jessica closed with a tribute to the man she once built a life with. “Alex was kind. He was funny. He was stubborn in the best way. He loved bad dad jokes, late-night ice cream runs with the kids, and singing off-key in the car. He was my best friend even after we weren’t married anymore. And now he’s gone. I still loved him. I still love him. And I will spend the rest of my life making sure my kids know who he really was—not the version in the headlines, but the real Alex.”

Her post has been shared tens of thousands of times. Supporters have flooded the comments with messages of solidarity, shared memories of Alex from hospital coworkers and former classmates, and donations to a fund set up for the children’s future. A vigil planned outside the county courthouse has grown to include hundreds, with speakers calling for justice, transparency, and reform in federal use-of-force policies.

The videos—now synchronized and widely analyzed—continue to fuel debate. Forensic reviews suggest the shots came from multiple agents, contradicting early claims of a single shooter. No firearm was recovered from Pretti or the scene, despite DHS assertions that he was armed. Witnesses in sworn statements insist he was only holding his phone, attempting to document what appeared to be an aggressive raid nearby.

Pretti’s colleagues at the VA hospital have spoken of a man who worked extra shifts during crises, who comforted terrified patients, who brought coffee for night-shift nurses. “He was the calm in the storm,” one coworker said. “And now we’re the ones left in chaos.”

Jessica has asked the public to focus on facts, not anger. “I don’t want revenge,” she wrote in a follow-up message. “I want truth. I want my kids to know their dad didn’t die because he was dangerous—he died because someone made a terrible choice. And I want that choice to mean something. I want it to stop happening to other families.”

As the investigation continues under the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, pressure mounts on DHS to release any available body camera footage and to explain the discrepancies between their account and the witness videos. Pretti’s family has filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit alleging excessive force and failure to de-escalate. Civil rights organizations have joined the call for an independent federal review.

In the end, Jessica’s message stands as both eulogy and plea. It reminds the world that behind every viral clip, every official statement, and every protest sign is a real person—loved, missed, and irreplaceable. Alex Pretti was a father, a nurse, a friend. To his ex-wife, he was still the man she loved. And to his children, he was simply Dad.

The pain of his loss will not fade quickly. But through Jessica’s words, through the memories shared by those who knew him, and through the videos that captured his final moments, Alex Pretti’s story endures—not as a statistic, but as a human being whose life mattered, and whose death demands answers.