Babbling About Ice Storms to Ice Shootings

#208: A winter storm might make us think about groceries, generators, and the warmth we take for granted—but the real shock lands when a life is taken on camera. We move from icy roads in the South to a deadly confrontation in Minnesota, where VA nurse Alex Peretti was shot while filming a protest. No music, no fluff, just a careful walk through what’s visible on multiple videos, what the law allows, and what ethics demand when power meets the public.

We lay out the confirmed facts: legal concealed carry in a permit-friendly state, a licensed nurse who never drew his weapon, and a rapid escalation that ends with multiple shots fired into someone turned away with a phone in his hand. From there, we bring frontline experience into the conversation—hospital de-escalation training, the cues professionals are taught to read, and the higher standard we expect from officers trained to control risk without lethal force. The goal isn’t to inflame; it’s to clarify. When headlines muddy the picture with “wait for the facts,” we ask which facts actually matter and which talking points are designed to distract.

This story doesn’t live in a vacuum. Communities of color have warned about similar encounters for years, often without the visibility that video brings. We connect the dots between policy and character, between what’s legal and what’s right, and between public outrage and the slow work of accountability. If you care about use of force, protest rights, ICE operations, VA standards, and what de-escalation should look like in practice, you’ll find a grounded, human-centered breakdown here.

If the momentum after viral tragedies keeps fading, nothing changes. Listen, reflect, and bring your voice to the table. Subscribe, share this episode with a friend who needs to hear it, and leave a review with one action you’ll take to keep accountability alive.

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening And No Music
• 0:38 Winter Storm Across The South
• 3:24 Adult Prep, Power Fears, Generators
• 6:35 Gratitude For Modern Utilities
• 6:35 Transition To Heavy Topic
• 6:35 Why Speak About The Shooting
• 7:13 Media Narratives And “Wait For Facts”
• 9:16 Establishing Agreed Facts
• 11:07 Training And De‑Escalation Standards
• 14:29 What The Videos Show
• 18:24 Debunking “Domestic Terrorist” Claims
• 21:12 Morality Over Partisanship
• 24:10 Pattern Recognition And Visibility
• 26:36 Keep Momentum And Demand Accountability
• 27:39 Closing And Reflections

Transcript

Johnna : 0:00

What is up, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Babbles Nonsense podcast. Um today I'm not even gonna do an intro music. Um I'm just gonna kind of jump straight into the podcast. I want to talk. This is gonna be a little bit more heavy. I know, I know sometimes the podcast is heavy um when it comes to like relationship stuff, but that that's in a different type of heaviness. The the type of heaviness that I'm gonna talk about today, um, so if you if you don't want to listen to it or maybe you want to hear my thoughts and opinions, maybe get a different perspective if you if if you have a different perspective, I want to talk about Alex Paretti and the shooting that happened this past weekend in Minnesota. I'm gonna first touch on the weather a little bit before we jump into that. So I hope everyone is doing well. I hope you are surviving this winter storm. I'm not sure where everyone's listening from, but if you are in the southeastern part of the United States, you know that there was a winter storm that pretty much took over everywhere from Texas to just east. East of Texas pretty much got it. It was a pretty large winter storm. Um, I was following the meteorologist James Spann. He covers pretty much all of Alabama and he is such a good meteorologist. Um, and he, you know, up until the event, like he he was very like, this is gonna kind of be unpredictable for where I where I currently live because of the cold air coming from the north, and then then it was warmer in southern Alabama, southern Alabama. So we're we were very fortunate where I live. We didn't get much damage um or ice. We did get obviously cold temperatures, but like on Saturday it iced a little bit and the roads were a little bit slick. I I did have to get out and get groceries because I'm one of those people that I just I don't know. It's not that I'm like not trying to prepare, but also at the same time, I've really just how I've grown up and how I have been my entire adult life is I don't really keep a lot of non-perishable foods around. Uh meal prep and I I have food for the week, and that's pretty much all I have because I'm not cooking for anyone else. I'm just cooking for myself. Um I did get a little bit of non-perishable things because I I did, I got nervous. People were talking about this storm like it was it was going to be very bad, which I'm not, and it was for some people. And um but in the past two years where I'm from, like in 2025, there was a larger ice storm that did shut the city down for like almost a week. Um I but also being in healthcare, we've always, no matter what the weather has been, no matter you had to be at work, whether that be you stayed overnight at the hospital or you got there and it took you three hours to get there. And I was always that person like I'm not staying 24, 25, 7 where I work. And I have a dog at home and there's no one to take care of her, and yada yada yada. Um, and then the year before that, like it got so cold, we didn't have an ice storm, but it got so cold, you know. We're living in the south, um, living in Huntsville, Alabama, they had to do rolling blackouts to preserve energy because, you know, our systems are just not set up to run that that long. And then it, of course, being an adult, I was like, When well, what is going on? Like, is this global warming? Has this ever happened before? I truly do believe in global warming, by the way. Um, I think the weather every year, the the tornadoes, the hurricanes, the earthquakes, you know, summers and winters are just getting hotter and colder and the storms are getting stronger. And it is scary. Especially like, I know like when I was a child, we thought, oh, snow day, great. No, school, and of course, you're supposed to be young and carefree at that age. You're supposed to just not understand the dangers and the the scare, the scariness of it all. But being an adult and you know, owning my own house and having to prepare, it is different. Um, but just so you know, what I found in my research is it has been colder than this in Huntsville before, but that has not been since 1985. So just speaking. Um, but we were very fortunate where I where I live. Um, we did get a little bit of ice Saturday morning, um, but by the afternoon it was gone because the temperatures rose. And then the rain did come up Saturday night into Sunday morning, which is kind of what they were more so worried about because that weather, that temperature rose and then it was gonna quickly drop back down to the teens with the rain. So were we gonna get freezing rain? Was it gonna ice over? They were hoping that the rain was gonna stop in time enough for the roads and stuff to dry so that the roads were not just black ice everywhere, which some areas, you know, there was ice, but mo majority of the city, from what I could tell, following um like what's happening in Huntsville and all that on Facebook, it seemed like most of the roads were okay where I'm at. Now other areas were not so fortunate. I know I have fa friends and family in Nashville who have been without power for three to four days, and that is one of my biggest fears. Like I was even a little nervous about that. This go-around, just with everything that's going on in my house and it just being colder, you know, since everything a little bit anyways, enough about you. Um, I was like, should I go get a generator? Like, what what's the thing here? Number one, when I was looking at generators, thank God for my friends' husbands who help me out and my dad still, because like there are certain things, like I do feel like I'm an independent woman, and I do feel like I can do most things, most things by myself or hire someone to do it or figure it out, right? But then there are some things when you are home alone, for example, a generator, like just looking at the things, it's like, what do I do? Like, you have to buy all this stuff, you have to know how to work it. And I'm like, uh no, I guess this just isn't for me. But it just something to look for or like think about as an adult going forward, like, okay, maybe that is something, um, an investment that you should like two big investments that I for sure want to get at some point in my adult life is a tornado shelter and a generator, just because of you know, catastrophes and stuff like that. It's scary as you get older. And like I said, when you're a kid, you're not supposed to think about those things. You're supposed to be a child. Um, but, anyways, I think we also forg forget how um great it is or wonderful inventions are, such as electricity and HVAC systems and heating and cooling and things like that. Um, I watch a lot of time period pieces, and I just got finished with watching Victoria, which by the way, if you watch that, what a terrible season three ending and not being renewed. Side note. Um, but yeah, like watch period pieces and you quickly forget like they're walking around holding candles and they don't have HVACs for summers and winters and all this other stuff. But, anyways, um, enough about the weather. What I really wanted to dive into today is the shooting of Alex Pareti. If you want to turn it off now, I completely understand. If maybe it's too heavy, maybe too somber, maybe it's something that you just can't process at the moment, or maybe you're the small percentage of the world, in my opinion, that believe that we're overthinking it or whatever. I have seen posts like that. And I tried my best to figure out a way to not make this political, but it's kind of hard not to when it's surrounding a political policy such as immigration and ice being in Minnesota. And I'll be the first to admit when I was in my teens and early 20s, I was one of those people that was like, oh, politics don't matter, all politicians lie, my my vote doesn't count. And I got that from my parents, right? Because that's how my parents were. But then the older I got and the more I educated myself and surrounded myself with people who are very involved in politics, it became an eye-opening that, you know, every voice does matter no matter how big or small. And that's why I was like, I do want to talk about this, even if some people, you know, stop following the podcast, even if some people, you know, don't respect my opinion, that's okay because I still want to share my thoughts and surroundings about it because it has been heavy on me, um, weighing heavy on me. And um, yeah, so we're just gonna kind of dive in. And what kind of sparked this and why I wanted to talk about it? Because there was just one person um that I saw of all my social media feed where I saw they post um a social media clip of, you know, the news media pretty much lying about what happened. And I'm sorry to say that, but it that it might maybe that's my opinion, but I feel like it's very much factual that it was a lie after seeing the multiple views of this um guy being shot. And when I saw that and saw this social media clip of this person saying that we don't know all the facts and we should let it be investigated before we formulate an opinion, um, it really kind of struck a nerve with me and it it it didn't sit right with me because I think the biggest thing that we all forget is that yes, no one is that that's anything in life, right? No one's gonna know 100% of the fact because we weren't there. But when something so blatantly obvious is filmed from multiple views and you can see the entire act, it's kind of hard to understand or respect someone's opinion that says that we don't know all the facts because it is very obvious in those clips that this this kid was murdered. Um, so that's what I want to try to do. I want to try to separate, you know, if we if we want to go down that path of what's fact and what's not fact. Is the stuff that we don't know actually matter? In my opinion, personally, no. Like we people trying to say, does you know what did he what did he say to the ice? We saw that they were face to face and both of them had their mouth open and talking. Does it matter? No, it doesn't matter to me what he said. He could have cussed the man out and he still didn't deserve what he got. Um, so let's kind of separate that a little bit. Let's let's talk about what actually we do know and what actually did happen per these videos and what the news outlets and the media is then trying to say. So we know that he's a 37-year-old male, that he was an ICU nurse working in the V the VA. Um, and just so you know, I'm gonna touch on that briefly in a little bit because I have opinions on that as well, on what people are saying there, just coming from a healthcare provider myself. So we know that. We know that he was in a state that has a um concealed to carry. We know that he had a license to carry a gun. We know that he was operating on his Second Amendment right, where he is allowed to carry guns um wherever he wants to go, whether that makes someone uncomfortable or not. I will be the first to say that I don't love concealed weapons that even if your state allows it, because guns scare me. Because I feel like humans are flawed, and I feel like anybody can be triggered at a moment. We don't know, especially myself working with veterans, and I've worked with psych patients in ERs and I've worked with patients who just have tempers and things like that. I've seen a lot of different personalities, and we never know what's going to trigger someone. So I personally am afraid of guns. I remember my uncle tried to get me to shoot one and told me I needed to have one to protect myself. And I was like, no, I don't want to do that. And that's just my personal opinion. Now I know there are a lot of opinions surrounding guns, and that's usually a political debate. But if we're talking about law and we're talking about what people voted for in policy, it is voted into policy to have you're allowed to conceal a weapon as long as it's licensed and registered, you're not a convicted felon. And he was none of those things. So he was allowed to have that weapon. Now, did he have a weapon at a protest? Yes. Is that illegal? No. Um, with everything that was going on in Minnesota, how do we blame someone for bringing something knowing that things have been getting violent and knowing that things have been out of control and maybe you're gonna have to protect yourself, that he's still following law. Okay. So all of that we know is fact. The other side is saying, well, we don't know what he said. That to me doesn't matter because and the reason why I say that is because being a healthcare professional, I've been in this field for 15 years. I have worked in the ER for 11 of those, trauma for one, and we work with a lot of police officers because we're in high-risk environments of violence, you know, things like that. I've talked and sat with several police officers, and I have friends that are in the military and um police officers, and talk to them about these concerns and political debates or whatnot. Police officers have a more rigorous training, even military and police officers have a more rigorous training when it comes to what we call de-escalation techniques. Nurses have to go through it as well. Um, we've all seen social media recently about how nurses are one of the top professions where people are abused and patients get violent. And a lot of hospitals do not protect you if you act back, if you're defending yourself. A lot of times they that goes out the window, and that's why you have to go through a de-escalation training. And the one I went through is called Moab, um, to where you have to notice signs, whether that be someone clenching their jaw, someone, you know, um moving their eyes rapidly back and forth, their tone is going up, they're shifting their weight. We're trained to look for those cues and to try to de-escalate the situation at that moment. Either walk away, you know, offer them something something, you know, we're trained to do that. Or you're trained to take someone down in a dangerous situation without being violent. And so after talking to police officers and military personnel, similar, similar training, but more vigorous, like because obviously they are in a more in a higher risk role of violence and stuff like that. Because if police officers were just allowed to use force every time someone got rude, smart with them, there would be a lot, guys, of deaths and murders around this time. Because I'm I'm I've talked again, I've talked to a lot of police officers. Um I've had family members who, you know, have been pulled over, popped off at the mouth. I I'm not I'm not gonna say I popped off at the mouth to a police officer, but I've done that to friends before. We are all human and we all say things, we all raise our voices and we all have tone at some point. But nonetheless, going back to the situation, so yes, he had the right to take a gun to a protest. And if we're looking at facts and what's on these videos of pretty much every angle, we see, and it's very blatantly obvious that he's filming what's going on at these protests with these ICE agents. He had his cell phone in his right hand. Again, it's not illegal to film somebody. Um, I think that the more social media and videos and phones we're seeing more of this. Do I believe that this hasn't happened in the past? No, I believe this has been ongoing and it's more it's just being more publicized and televised now because we are all aware that this has now been happening and we know to film just in case something is said or you have to defend yourself because that's just what it is in America. Everyone is so happy, and you just have to make sure there are factual-based evidence, especially when you're going up against a higher authority because let's just call it what it is, the corruption that goes on. I'm not saying everyone is corrupt, so please don't come at me for that. But there is some corruption that goes on, and people are going to want to defend themselves. So let's again reiterate the facts. 37-year-old male, ICU um VA nurse, had a concealed weapon that he was licensed to carry, was in a concealed weapon carried a weapon state, um, never drew his weapon. If you're watching these videos from every different angle, you can see that something is said either between him and an ice agent or the women behind him and the ice agent, and they the ice agent comes to them, walks over to them. Alex Peretti is filming in his right hand, and either he has his left hand in the air or he had it on the ground to brace a fall. But you can see that the ice agent pushed either the woman or him, and Alex Peretti turns his back to the ice agent as the ice agent tries to pepper spray him and two females. So, yes, of course, when he turns his back because he has his weapon, and I think I heard a military person say it was at his six o'clock to him, they see it after the ice agent pushes someone and starts pepper spraying. So at this point, again, phone in the right hand, left hand in the air as he's trying to protect these two women. He is then knocked to the ground. So then the left hand is on the ground, right hand still holding the cell phone. So, no, no hands were available nor free to pull a gun to show life like threatening someone's life, despite someone seeing a gun that still does not show that your life is in threat. If you see it on a person where they cannot reach it, you then see the ice agent pull the gun from his back. And this is where we don't know if it's fact or not because we we're not hearing audio. Well, there is audio in some clips, but you just don't know because multiple people have guns. We hear a gunshot go off, and some are speculating that as the ice agent is pulling Alex Predy's gun from his person, he accidentally fires the arm, which then either scares or whatever the ice agent pointing a gun at the back, at Alex Predi's back. He is not facing the ice agent. You clearly see that his hands, again, right hand with a cell phone, left hand on the ground, not an immediate threat. Um, and then Alex Predy proceeds to get murdered and gets shot multiple times, not one time, multiple times. From what I have also been told by military personnel and police officers, you're all they are also trained to maim a person, not kill a person, like shooting for arms, legs, whatever, to if they have to like get get a gun or a weapon off of s the person, but still not kill them. Um and then that's what we see, and that is all factual. You can look up these videos. Um the man did not number one deserve to be shot at all, period. Then we have people from the administration getting on TV calling this young man a domestic terrorist. Well, let's look at that. That is clearly not fact. I know that because being a healthcare provider and being in the nursing field to sit for nursing boards, you have to have a background check. Um, you have to have a background check to go into nursing school. For him to work at the VA, you have to have a extensive background check. And I know that because I recently started doing contract work with the VA and I had to do this extensive background check. It took like two or three months. I found out that they mailed letters to people that I have previously worked with like years ago to ask about me. Um, I had to submit multiple documents and then working as a nurse, and you know, a healthcare professional and doing VA contract work and knowing friends that have been pulled over for traffic violations and things like that, like every time you renew your nursing license, you have to put anything, whether that be I was pulled over for traffic tickets, I got a DUI, whatever it may be, you are required to report it. That's standard. So the fact that he was working still as a nurse and for a federal hospital, he would have had to report any violent act, they would have found out about it, he wouldn't have been able to renew his nursing license, which is every two years. So that is not fact. The man was not a domestic terrorist. Um, and that is, I guess, the most disheartening part of this, you know, is not only was this man murdered, that's the most disheartening part, this man was murdered for protecting women, for standing up for his rights. Um now they're trying to flip the narrative that this guy was a bad guy and he quote unquote deserved what he got, which is simply not true. No one, no one at all, deserves that type of death in any capacity. Like just because you're making someone mad or saying things that someone doesn't like, they don't deserve to die for their beliefs. And this can be f flopped, flipped, and flopped no matter what side of political party you stand for, no matter if it would have been opposite actions where this was Republican versus Democrat, Democrat versus Republican. It doesn't matter. What matters here is a human life was taken over something so egregious and putting politics aside, whether you believe in immigration policy or you don't, whether you believe that ICE agents should be there or you don't, putting all of those differences politics aside, if this were any other situation, if this was just human to human, if this was, you know, this guy getting pulled over for a traffic traffic violation or walking down the street, no one, and I don't care what situation you want to try to put this person in, deserved this type of death. Period. That's it's immoral, it's unethical, it's it's unit's not humane, it's just sad, is what it is. But it does open the eyes to a lot of people saying, What does America become? And this is where it can get a little political because that's when like when we say what does America become, it it's not what America's become. I think a lot of people that I've spoken with about these tragedies and whatnot, again, it has been happening. It has been happening to people of color. They have been speaking out about this for years where they don't maybe they don't have it recorded or they don't have it televised. Um we do have a huge televised event where something similar happened to George Floyd. Um, and then of course the narrative always wants to change to try to dehumanize or villainize the person that was wrongfully murdered. And I just I encourage everyone to just take a moment, put your political beliefs aside, take these situations, apply them. If this were you, that you was if it was your family member, if it was your son, if it was your daughter. It does again, it just does to, in my opinion, like we're just not thinking about human lives. We're trying to justify something because you want to quote unquote say this was fact or that was not legal or this was not, versus saying, What's the moral and ethics at the end of the story? What's the moral and ethics of this all? And then to then try to make this man seem like he was a horrible man and try to get people to be like, well, if he was that horrible, then he deserved it. No, that's not how the law works. That's not what democracy is. Whatever happened to um innocent until proven guilty, it looks like it's flipped to now you're guilty until proven innocent, but you may not make it to your trial to prove your innocence because we already found you guilty. So let's just execute you at this moment. That's what it feels like, and that's what it's turning into. And that's where I think we have to stay angry and not angry in the sense of like, let's turn around and use our voice for the bad. But it's like you have to stay angry and you have to stay in this moment in this momentum because I from past events I feel like the momentum kind of falls short, and and that's what they're hoping for, is for oh, this will just quote unquote die down. Um, because once something else happens, then you know, someone's on to the next thing, and that's typically how social media works is something bad happens to you, it's publicized, and then it goes away because you're just waiting for the next bad thing to happen. But I think that we have to use our voices, and if this does spark or trigger something in you where you want to make a change, the change comes from educating yourself and being aware of the deeper aspect of the policy. And then some people will say character shouldn't matter when it comes to voting for the president or senators or congress or governors or mayors or whatever it may be, but it does because a policy can be so good to a certain extent, and then their character matters because your policy can be well-rounded and you're like, okay, well, let's respect that policy. But if they're if we know that a lot of politicians run on fictitious, you know, things because they're giving people what they want to hear, then you have to also look at the past. You also have to look at character, you also have to say, if something so bad should go wrong, do I want someone in that office with good morals, good ethics, that knows that they can at least think and be like, you know, what would Jesus do? Like, serious, and I'm being serious, I know that's kind of funny, but like sometimes we have to think that way. Sometimes we have to just acknowledge that character does matter along with policy. But I'll stop babbling about all that. Um, I want to end this by saying this. What happened to Alex Preddy didn't suddenly create this conversation. For many people, especially in communities of color, this conversation has been happening for a very long time. The difference now is visibility. This moment was captured, it was televised, it reached people who might not otherwise see what these encounters can and do look like. And we've seen this before. I mentioned it earlier. We watched George Floyd be murdered on camera. And for a moment the world stopped and they listened and they rallied, but somehow we lost the momentum in that. What I don't want is for that momentum to fade again. Not just for Alex, not just for one name or one case, but for everyone whose stories don't always make the news, don't always get footage, and don't always get justice. Using our voices doesn't mean jumping to conclusions or ignoring facts. It means it means refusing to look away. It means asking questions, demanding accountability, and insisting that humanity stays at the center of these conversations. Change doesn't happen because one person speaks once. It happens when we keep speaking, when we don't let discomfort silence us, and when we remember that staying quiet has never protected the people most affected. This is not about being heard. This is about not letting the momentum die and keeping this man and everyone, man or woman, story alive and using your voice and educating yourself and researching and putting your political beliefs aside for a moment to actually look at all the facts and actually look at the different sides and just speak up when something is wrong. And I will end it there. Um, I'm sorry this was a more somber note, but I felt compelled to just use the small platform that I do have um to try to hopefully if I just change one person's opinion or perspective, then that matters the most. And I hope you all just continue to pray for this family and the friends and family and can continue to pray honestly for this country. Um until next time, guys. Bye.