The parents of Alex Pretti have retained a former federal prosecutor who helped Minnesota’s attorney general convict the police officer who kneeled on George Floyd’s neck of murder.
Steve Schleicher, a partner at the Minneapolis firm Maslon, is an experienced litigator who served as a special prosecutor for Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison in the 2021 trial of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
According to a family spokesperson, Schleicher is representing Michael and Susan Pretti pro bono.
Pretti’s younger sister, Micayla Pretti, has separately hired attorney Anthony Cotton of Kuchler & Cotton in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The lawyers were retained to “protect the family’s interest in the aftermath of this horrific tragedy,” the spokesman said.
Alex Pretti, 37, was killed on January 24 while he was legally carrying a handgun, was tackled and disarmed by one federal agent, and then shot to death by two other agents.
A new video surfaced that showed another altercation with Pretti and federal agents on January 13, 11 days prior to his killing.
“A week before Alex was gunned down in the street — despite posing no threat to anyone — he was violently assaulted by a group of ICE agents,”Steve Schleicher, an attorney representing the family, said in a statement after reviewing footage and still images from the incident. “Nothing that happened a full week before could possibly have justified Alex’s killing at the hands of ICE on Jan 24.”
Also, Renee Good’s family has hired the Chicago-based firm Romanucci & Blandin, which previously represented Floyd ‘s family.