After federal agents fatally shot Alex Pretti on Jan. 24 in Minneapolis, social media users shared what they said was one agent’s name and photo.
An Instagram post with over 45,000 views included a photo, said it was Evan Kilgore and said he was the person who shot Pretti. “Here’s one of the many murderers out there right now. Justice is coming.”
The name and photo were also shared on Facebook and X, with claims that Kilgore shot Pretti.
(Screenshot from Instagram)
The images match the X profile photo of conservative commentator Evan Kilgore, whose X profile identifies him as an “American Nationalist” with more than 185,000 followers. But Kilgore was not involved in Pretti’s shooting.
The federal agents involved in the shooting have not been publicly identified.
Kilgore has addressed the claims, writing on X that he is “not the individual who shot Alex Pretti yesterday in Minneapolis.”
Kilgore told PolitiFact that he has never been an Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Border Patrol agent, nor has he ever worked with or for any law enforcement agency. He said he was at home in Ohio at the time of the shooting and shared timestamped video footage with PolitiFact as proof.
Video footage from witnesses of Pretti’s shooting shows that two agents shot him. The shooting happened at about 9 a.m. Central Time.
At 10:38 a.m. Eastern Time, which is 9:38 a.m. CT, Kilgore posted on X about the Ohio weather, sharing a snow forecast. Then, about 15 minutes later, Kilgore posted for the first time about Pretti’s shooting. “BREAKING: There has been another Border Patrol related shooting in Minneapolis near 26th Street & Nicollet Ave. The individual is down,” he wrote.
He posted videos of the shooting and commentary about it throughout the day.
The next day, Kilgore addressed the claims misidentifying him as the shooter, writing, “If you took a single moment to scroll through my public account on X, you would see I’m not even in the same state. You would even see I was making public commentary about the incident and about how much snow I will be getting in another state, yesterday.”
Kilgore said he is considering taking legal action against one person who misidentified him as the shooter. He said he has contacted local law enforcement.
We rate claims that Kilgore is one of the Border Patrol agents who shot Pretti Pants on Fire!
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird and Staff Writer Maria Briceño contributed to this report.
This story originally appeared on PolitiFact
