Last summer season, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent discovered himself in a dangerous scenario.
His arm was pinned into the again window of a automobile as a suspect sped away, dragging him throughout the pavement for about 100 yards, in keeping with courtroom paperwork. The agent, who suffered accidents to his arm and hand, fired his Taser on the man in the course of the encounter, data present.
Roughly six months later, the identical officer confronted one other driver who hit the fuel as he tried to stop her car. This time, he fired along with his service weapon – killing 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good.
The officer in the June case is recognized in courtroom paperwork as Jonathan Ross. A senior Department Homeland Security official confirmed that case concerned the identical officer who fired the photographs that killed Good this week.
As authorities and lawmakers nationwide search to untangle the circumstances behind the deadly capturing, Ross’s actions in the course of the incident last summer season and his skilled background are going through renewed scrutiny.
A transcript of Ross’s testimony from the June case reviewed by NCS provides new element to his expertise, which features a tour of responsibility with the National Guard in Iraq as a gunner from 2004 to in 2005. In his testimony he describes performing “hundreds” of traffic stops in his profession over practically 20 years in Border Patrol and then ICE – together with encounters with drivers looking for to flee.
“They do erratic behaviors, they take great risks, and they seem to not be aware of other people driving on the road,” Ross informed the jury. “They usually – they make just extreme movements with their vehicles.”
Trump administration officers have cited that June case as proof that ICE brokers face lethal threats that compel them to react with excessive drive.
“That very ICE officer nearly had his life ended, dragged by a car, six months ago,” Vice President JD Vance informed reporters on Thursday. “You think maybe he’s a little bit sensitive about someone ramming him with an automobile?”
But native lawmakers and some specialists say that this week’s scenario was removed from life-threatening to the ICE officer, as Good seemed to be swerving away from him as he started capturing.
“To use deadly force… the elements of that have to be so concerning to open up fire on an individual,” mentioned former Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, including in a NCS interview that the agent ought to merely have gotten out of the best way of Good’s automobile.
Michael Harrigan, a retired FBI agent who now consults on regulation enforcement practices and ways, mentioned it’s not unreasonable to consider that the prior automobile dragging case could have been on the ICE officer’s thoughts as he pulled the set off. But Harrigan mentioned brokers are skilled to judge each incident individually.
“The fact is every incident has to stand alone,” Harrigan mentioned. “It doesn’t really matter what they went through before. It’s never going to be a justification for something else. They know that.”
Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, who declined to call Ross, citing violent threats to ICE brokers, mentioned he “is a longtime ICE officer who has been serving his country his entire life.” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has defended the officer’s actions.
“This is an experienced officer who followed his training, and we’ll continue to let the investigation unfold into the individual and continue to follow the procedures and policies that happen in these use of force cases,” Noem mentioned at a information convention.
Ross served in Iraq from 2004 to 2005 with the Indiana National Guard, he testified in courtroom, and then joined Border Patrol in 2007. He mentioned he labored with the company close to El Paso, Texas, the place he labored on intelligence about “cartels and drug smuggling,” earlier than becoming a member of ICE in 2015.
With ICE, he mentioned, he works in fugitive operations in the Minneapolis space and commonly collaborates with different federal companies. “I target higher value targets,” he testified.
The agent’s expertise in ICE included a range to a Special Response Team, McLaughlin mentioned, which requires 30 hours of tryouts, steady coaching and skilled marksman {qualifications}.
His violent encounter with a suspect last June started when federal officers moved in to arrest Roberto Carlos Muñoz-Guatemala, an undocumented immigrant who had been charged with sexually abusing a teenage relative in 2022, in keeping with a courtroom affidavit written by an FBI agent concerned in the case.
At the time, ICE had requested native officers maintain him in jail, however that request was denied, the affidavit mentioned. The affidavit refers to Muñoz-Guatemala as being from Guatemala, whereas a DHS press release described him as being from Mexico.
On June 17, 2025, federal officers tracked Muñoz-Guatemala to his house in Bloomington, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis, and carried out a traffic stop as he began to drive away.
Ross, who was considered one of a number of federal brokers concerned in the arrest, initially drew his service weapon, however holstered the gun after Muñoz-Guatemala stopped his automobile and raised his palms, in keeping with the affidavit.
The affidavit doesn’t identify Ross, solely referring to him as an officer for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division, however different courtroom paperwork together with an exhibit and witness listing clarify that it’s Ross.
Muñoz-Guatemala handed Ross an “identification document,” however refused to observe Ross’s instructions to decrease his window and open the door, the affidavit says. Ross pointed his Taser at Muñoz-Guatemala, used a “spring-loaded window punch” to interrupt the automobile’s rear passenger door window, and put his arm by means of the window to attempt to open the door.
Muñoz-Guatemala responded by driving the automobile onto the curb and accelerating away “at a high rate of speed,” in keeping with the affidavit, and Ross was pulled alongside by his proper arm. A door-camera video posted by information channel WCCO exhibits Muñoz-Guatemala driving away rapidly throughout a garden, with a number of officers operating after him.
“I was fearing for my life,” Ross testified in the course of the trial.
Ross mentioned he discharged ten rounds of his Taser, hitting Muñoz-Guatemala, and yelled for him to stop “over and over and over again at the top of my lungs.”
Muñoz-Guatemala swerved the automobile down the road and dragged Ross about 100 yards, in keeping with the affidavit, earlier than the agent was knocked away from the car. Muñoz-Guatemala then drove with the Taser hanging out of the automobile window, and was arrested a couple of mile away by native cops.
Ross suffered a lower to his proper arm that required 20 stitches, in addition to a lower to his left hand that required 13 stitches, in keeping with the affidavit, which incorporates photographs of Ross’s bloody limbs.
“Some of the wounds they couldn’t close. There wasn’t enough skin to close it with stitches,” Ross mentioned.
Ross additionally mentioned in courtroom in December that ICE’s area workplace in the Twin Cities didn’t have a body-worn digicam coverage. Body-worn cameras had been “rolled out to certain offices throughout ICE, and ours was not one of them that was rolled out at that time,” Ross mentioned. As a consequence, he mentioned, immigration brokers in the Minneapolis space “cannot wear them.”
Muñoz-Guatemala was charged with assault on a federal officer with a harmful or lethal weapon and ensuing in bodily damage, and was convicted by a jury in December after a three-day trial. His sentencing is pending.
Ross’s lethal encounter with Good started on Wednesday as ICE brokers labored in Minneapolis. Video exhibits that Good’s car was partially blocking a street that brokers had been trying to drive down.
As two different brokers rushed towards her window, gesturing at her and attempting to open the car’s door, Ross walked to the entrance of her car.
Good briefly put the car in reverse, then shifted into drive and hit the fuel, with the wheels seemingly turned to the precise as a substitute of immediately forward towards Ross. It’s unclear whether or not her car made important contact with the agent as he started firing, hanging her. Her car accelerated down the street, crashing into parked vehicles close by. She was later pronounced lifeless.
In the minutes after the capturing, Ross is seen in witness movies approaching Good’s crashed car, earlier than strolling away and telling different officers to name 911. He and at the very least one different agent then drove away in one other car.
Experts in regulation enforcement questioned Ross’s actions in the capturing, telling NCS that the agent appeared to violate a number of key guidelines for participating with suspects in automobiles.
ICE’s personal common coverage is that brokers shouldn’t chase automobiles or fireplace at them until there’s imminent hazard, mentioned John Amaya, a former deputy chief of employees for the company in the course of the Obama administration. He mentioned that many brokers will not be skilled in crowd management practices or interacting with residents, including that that may make sure interactions “a recipe for disaster.”
Charles Ramsey, a former Philadelphia police commissioner, informed NCS that many regulation enforcement companies across the nation have restricted officers in their interactions with suspects in automobiles.
“You don’t reach into cars – that’s how you wind up getting dragged down the street,” Ramsey mentioned. “You don’t stand in front or behind a car with the engine running… Policies around the country have pretty much prohibited firing at a moving car.”
Some of Ross’s actions could possibly be legally justified, Ramsey famous. “But just because you can doesn’t mean you should,” he mentioned. “Use of deadly force is an absolute last resort when you don’t have other options. He had other options. Don’t stand in front of the freaking car – that’s option number one.”
NCS’s Priscilla Alvarez and Scott Glover contributed to this report.