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What we know about Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis
What we know about Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis

Multiple news outlets, including the Associated Press, have identified Jonathan Ross as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. Federal officials have not publicly named Ross, but they have revealed details that link him to the shooting.

Ross shot and killed Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, on Wednesday. Eyewitness video shows that Good’s vehicle was parked horizontally across the right lane of a one-way residential street when she encountered a group of ICE agents. One agent demanded that Good get out of the car and grabbed the front door handle. Ross, who was standing in front of Good’s car as it began to move, quickly pulled his weapon and fired at least two shots into the vehicle.

Trump administration officials have claimed that Good was trying to “ram” and “kill” Ross in an “act of domestic terrorism.” But video footage of Wednesday's shooting taken from three camera angles and analyzed by the New York Times shows that Good's vehicle appeared to be turning away from Ross as he opened fire.

Here’s everything we know so far about Ross.

A military veteran with a decade of ICE experience

Ross, 43, joined ICE in 2015 and has spent the last 10 years as a deportation officer in Minnesota, according to the AP (which based its reporting on statements Ross recently made in court).

On Thursday, Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said that Ross (whom she declined to name for safety reasons) is a member of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations Special Response team — a tactical unit tasked with handling high-risk situations that fall outside the scope of daily operations for standard deportation officers. Selection requires a 30-hour tryout and additional training on specialized skills such as breaching techniques, perimeter control, hostage rescue and firearms.

According to his courtroom testimony, Ross’s job is to track down and arrest “higher value targets” for fugitive operations in the ICE region that includes Minneapolis. He also leads a team with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.

“So I develop the targets, create a target package, surveillance, and then develop a plan to execute the arrest warrant,” Ross said in court.

Ross has ample experience with guns. According to his courtroom testimony, he also serves as a firearm instructor and an active shooter instructor (as well as a field intelligence officer and a member of the SWAT team). Before joining ICE, he deployed with the Indiana National Guard in 2004 and 2005 to Iraq, where he manned the machine gun on a combat patrol truck.

In 2007, Ross joined the U.S. Border Patrol and learned to speak Spanish while attending the agency’s academy in New Mexico. He went on to serve as a border patrol agent in El Paso, Texas.

Injured and hospitalized — twice

According to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Ross — whom she did not name — “went to the hospital” and “received treatment” after “he was hit by [Good’s] vehicle.” He is now “spending time with family," she added.

Noem and other administration officials also said that the ICE agent who shot and killed Good was previously injured during an enforcement encounter in June. According to Vice President JD Vance, the agent in question got “33 stitches in his leg” after he was “dragged by a car.”

CBS News reported at the time that the agent took out his spring-loaded window punch and broke the driver’s side rear window after the driver — a Guatemalan man who had been convicted of sexual abuse in Minnesota and for whom ICE had an arrest warrant — repeatedly refused to comply. The driver then sped away with “the agent hanging from the car.”

Court documents identify the injured officer as Ross.

According to prosecutors, Ross fired his Taser, striking the driver, Roberto Carlos Muñoz, in the head, face and shoulder. But Muñoz kept driving, dragging Ross 100 yards in 12 seconds. Muñoz finally knocked Ross free after swerving onto a curb for a second time. Prosecutors said Ross had “suffered multiple large cuts, and abrasions to his knee, elbow and face.”

“It was pretty excruciating pain,” Ross testified at Muñoz’s December trial. The cut to his arm required 20 stitches, according to court records.

Muñoz was arrested for assaulting a federal officer with a dangerous or deadly weapon. He claimed he didn’t know the person trying to stop him was a member of law enforcement. On Dec. 10, a Minnesota jury convicted Muñoz, saying he “should reasonably have known that Jonathan Ross was a law enforcement officer and not a private citizen attempting to assault him.”

On Thursday, Vance speculated that “maybe [the agent who shot Good] is a little bit sensitive about somebody ramming him with an automobile” because of his prior injuries.

Personal details emerge

Ross’s father, Ed Ross, spoke to the Daily Mail earlier this week. He described his son as “'a committed, conservative Christian, a tremendous father, a tremendous husband.”

“I couldn't be more proud of him,” said the elder Ross.

Ed Ross told the British outlet that his daughter-in-law is “a U.S. citizen but declined to say how long she had been in the U.S.” The Daily Mail reported that Jonathan Ross and his wife have been married since August 2012.

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