Compassion’s Call

Dear Reader,

There’s a particular cruelty to senseless death—the kind that arrives through deliberate violence against someone who was, in that moment, trying to help. Alex Pretti was 37, an ICU nurse at the VA Medical Center in Minneapolis. On January 24, he stepped forward to protect a woman being pushed to the ground by Border Patrol agents. Reputable news outlets report that multiple videos from the incident shows he was pepper-sprayed, wrestled down, and shot at least ten times in five seconds. Viewing the footage, it appears that he had a phone in one hand. His other hand—empty—was raised. It is hard—or perhaps I should say impossible—not to conclude that a man who spent his career saving veterans’ lives died trying to protect a stranger.

We often talk about death as an individual tragedy, but death doesn’t travel alone. When one person is killed, parts of everyone who loved them are dragged into that darkness. Parents lose not just a child but an imagined future. Friends lose the version of themselves that existed in his presence. A community loses a piece of its shared moral center.

This death radiates even further. When we learn that a nurse—someone whose job is literally to heal—was killed by federal agents while intervening on behalf of a woman being harmed, something breaks inside us. The social fabric that holds communities together—the unspoken agreement that we’ll look out for one another, that we’ll step in when someone needs help—tears.

Even those of us who never knew him feel it. His murder whispers a terrible lesson: maybe it’s safer to look away. Maybe compassion is too dangerous when those with badges and guns can kill with apparent impunity. How many people will hesitate the next time they see someone being hurt? How many will decide that getting home safely matters more than intervening? I don’t blame anyone for that calculation. We all have people who depend on us.

The only way to resist is to become more like the person we lost—not less. Every time we choose to help—to step in, to speak up, to demand accountability—we refuse the lesson his killing tries to teach. We insist that compassion is not naïve, and courage is not disposable. More compassionate and not fearful. More willing to help and not look away.

May his memory strengthen our hearts, our minds, and through the example he set, our actions.