The city of Minneapolis has released a video showing the moments preceding a non-fatal shooting of a Venezuelan man by a federal agent in January. The video appears to further undermine the federal government’s initial claims that an agent was attacked by three men and beaten with a shovel and broom.
On Jan. 14, the city-owned camera at the intersection of North Lyndale Avenue and North 24th Avenue recorded a car driven by a man fleeing ICE agents collide with a snowbank. The man, identified in court documents as Alfredo Aljorna, ran towards his home on the block, where his friend, Julio Sosa-Celis, was standing outside with a snow shovel.
Although the video is dark, it shows Sosa-Celis drop the shovel as Aljorna approached. When Aljorna slipped, an ICE agent jumped on him. Sosa-Celis is briefly visible trying to wrestle Aljorna out of the agent’s grasp, before both men turn and try to run inside. That’s when the video appears to show the ICE agent fire in their direction. Sosa-Celis received a minor gunshot wound on his thigh, according to court documents.
The initial statement from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security misidentified Sosa-Celis as the driver and alleged that he “got loose and began striking the officer with a shovel or broom stick.” The government said the agent had been ambushed, and “fired a defensive shot to save his life.”
The non-fatal shooting came just a week after ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good in south Minneapolis. Soon after news of the shooting spread, protesters and angry residents began to gather in north Minneapolis. Federal agents deployed massive amounts of teargas in the residential neighborhood and some federal vehicles they abandoned were vandalized.
Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem described the incident as “an attempted murder of federal law enforcement.”
Both Sosa-Celis and Aljorna were charged with assaulting a federal agent. But the federal government’s case began to unravel soon after.
MPR News spoke to an eyewitness, who said Sosa-Celis wasn’t attacking the agent, but was trying to separate the men so they could both take refuge in the home. She told MPR News that she heard a gunshot as Sosa-Celis closed the door behind him, and that the bullet that hit Sosa-Celis continued through another wall and embedded next to a children’s playpen used as a crib.
In mid-February, Minnesota U.S. Attorney Dan Rosen asked the court to drop the charges and said that newly discovered evidence is “materially inconsistent with the allegations,” although it’s not clear whether he was referring to the video evidence. ICE said in a statement at the time that the agency had placed both agents on administrative leave and that “sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements.”
The New York Times was the first media organization to publish the footage on Monday, along with a detailed analysis that included an unnamed official disclosing that federal investigators hadn’t bothered to watch the footage until three weeks after filing charges.
The New York Times also notes that the footage shows the men struggling on the ground for only about a dozen seconds, rather than the three minutes of fighting described by federal authorities. However, Sahan Journal reported early last month on the existence of the footage, which was described in detail in a search warrant affidavit.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said in a statement to MPR News that “the video makes it crystal clear that, just like in other situations during ‘Operation Metro Surge,’ the federal government’s account of what happened simply does not match the facts.”
The Minneapolis Police Department said Chief Brian O’Hara did not plan to make further comment on the case, but O’Hara told the New York Times after reviewing the video that “it sounds like an unarmed person got shot running away.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota did not respond to questions about why it took so long for investigators to watch the video or drop the charges. An attorney for Aljorna said the video backed up their client’s account, but declined to comment because criminal charges against the men have already been dropped.
Both state and federal authorities say they’re investigating the agents’ actions. Because the federal government is not sharing evidence with state authorities in cases where federal agents have shot Minneapolis residents, including the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, state investigators have said they don’t even know the name of the agent who shot Sosa-Celis.
