According to preliminary reports and bystander video footage that has since gone viral, the incident began when agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attempted to intercept a vehicle driven by Good. The footage, shaky and punctuated by the screams of witnesses, shows a chaotic scene of tactical vehicles and flashing lights. As the agents moved to box in the car, a sequence of events unfolded with lethal speed. Shots were fired into the vehicle, and within moments, Renee Nicole Good—a daughter, a neighbor, and a lifelong resident of the city—lay dead.1
In the immediate aftermath, the human cost of the shooting was voiced by her mother, Donna Ganger. Standing before a bank of microphones with a face etched in the hollow exhaustion of grief, Ganger sought to reclaim her daughter’s identity from the political machinery already grinding it into powder. She described Renee as a woman defined by kindness and a deep, abiding compassion for others.2 Most pointedly, Ganger addressed the burgeoning rumors surrounding her daughter’s presence at the scene, stating unequivocally that Renee was not an activist nor a participant in the ongoing anti-ICE protests that had been simmering in the region. She was, according to her mother, simply a woman trying to navigate her city, a person who found herself caught in the crosshairs of an agency that has become a symbol of terror for many and a bastion of order for others. Continue reading…
