Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) said Thursday there is a “very strong case” to charge the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer who shot Alex Pretti multiple times Saturday with voluntary manslaughter.
“I see a case that requires a state investigation and requires a state determination as to whether prosecution is warranted,” Shapiro said at an event hosted by The Christian Science Monitor.
“I would argue, based on the publicly available evidence, that you can make a very strong case for voluntary manslaughter against the federal officer who pulled the trigger multiple times.”
A video of the incident shows Pretti recording immigration officers before trying to assist a woman who was pushed to the ground by one agent. At that point, he was pushed down himself and surrounded by officers, with one apparently disarming him before another fired multiple rounds at the 37-year-old.
CBP, which oversees the Border Patrol, notified Congress on Tuesday that two agents fired shots during the incident, according to The Associated Press.
Shapiro, who previously served as the Keystone State’s attorney general, also said there is a “very strong case” that Border Patrol agents committed obstruction of justice when they did not secure the crime scene.
“I think you might be able to make a case for conspiracy, if there was a clear directive that that crime scene should be compromised, that you should not participate in an investigation,” added the governor of Pennsylvania. “So I think these three charges may be justified.”
Shapiro noted, however, that he is “unaware” of all the evidence that Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) and local prosecutors have regarding the shooting.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) took over the investigation into the incident over the objections of Drew Evans, the superintendent of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension of Minnesota (BCA), which oversees incidents of use of force by officers in the state.
In a lawsuit brought by BCA, a federal judge in Minnesota blocked DHS on Saturday from “destroying or altering” evidence from its probe.
Meanwhile, White House border czar Tom Homan said in a press conference Thursday that the federal immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota was not “perfect.”
“I don’t want to hear that everything that was done here was perfect. Nothing is ever perfect. Something can be improved and what we have been working on is making this operation safer, more efficient, by the book,” said Homan, who President Trump sent to the state to take care of the operation earlier this week.
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