What we know about Renee Nicole Good, the mom killed by ICE in Minneapolis
Good, 37, was shot in her car in a residential area of the city
The woman shot and killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis on Wednesday was Renee Nicole Macklin Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who had recently moved to Minnesota.
She was a U.S. citizen born in Colorado and appears to never have been charged with anything involving law enforcement beyond a traffic ticket.
While Trump administration officials continued Thursday to paint Good as a domestic terrorist who attempted to ram federal agents with her Honda Pilot, members of her family, friends and neighbours mourned a woman they remembered as gentle, kind and open-hearted.
Good, her six-year-old son and her wife only recently relocated to Minneapolis from Kansas City, Mo. The family settled on a quiet residential street of older homes and multifamily buildings, some front porches festooned with pride flags still twinkling with holiday lights.
A day after her death, neighbours had grown weary of talking to reporters. A handwritten sign posted to one front door read "NO MEDIA INQUIRES" and "JUSTICE FOR RENEE."
In social media accounts, Good described herself as a "poet and writer and wife and mom." She said she was currently "experiencing Minneapolis," displaying a pride flag emoji on her Instagram account. A profile picture posted to Pinterest shows her smiling and holding a young child against her cheek, along with posts about tattoos, hairstyles and home decorating
Her ex-husband, who asked not to be named out of concern for the safety of their children, said Good had just dropped off her six-year-old son at school on Wednesday and was driving home with her current partner when they encountered a group of ICE agents on a snowy street.
State and local officials and protesters have rejected the Trump administration's characterization of the shooting, with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey saying video recordings show the self-defence argument is "garbage."
Video taken by bystanders and posted to social media shows an officer approaching her car, demanding she open the door and grabbing the handle. When she begins to pull forward, a different ICE officer standing in front of the vehicle pulls his weapon and immediately fires at least two shots into the vehicle at close range.
In another video taken after the shooting, a distraught woman is seen sitting near the vehicle, wailing, "That’s my wife, I don’t know what to do!"
Calls and messages to Good's current partner received no response.
Family describes her as creative, passionate
Trump administration officials painted Good as a "domestic terrorist" who had attempted to ram federal agents with her car. Her ex-husband said she was no activist and that he had never known her to participate in a protest of any kind.
He described her as a devoted Christian who took part in youth mission trips to Northern Ireland when she was younger. She loved to sing, participating in a choir in high school and studying vocal performance in college.
She studied creative writing at Old Dominion University in Virginia and won a prize in 2020 for one of her works, according to a post on the school’s English department Facebook page.
"When she is not writing, reading, or talking about writing, she has movie marathons and makes messy art with her daughter and two sons," the post said.
She also hosted a podcast with her second husband, who died in 2023.
In a statement, Old Dominion University president Brian O. Hemphill wrote that Good's death is "yet another clear example that fear and violence have sadly become commonplace in our nation."
"May Renee's life be a reminder of what unites us: freedom, love, and peace."
Kent Wascom, who taught Good in the creative writing program at Old Dominion, recalled her juggling the birth of her child with work and school in 2019. He described her as "incredibly caring of her peers."
"What stood out to me in her prose was that, unlike a lot of young fiction writers, her focus was outward rather than inward," Wascom said. "A creative writing workshop can be a gnarly place with a lot of egos and competition, but her presence was something that helped make that classroom a really supportive place."
Good had a daughter and a son from her first marriage, who are now 15 and 12. Her six-year-old son was from her second marriage. Her ex-husband said she had primarily been a stay-at-home mom in recent years but had previously worked as a dental assistant and at a credit union.
'Loved her kids'
Donna Ganger, her mother, told the Minnesota Star Tribune the family was notified of the death late Wednesday morning.
"She was an amazing human being," Ganger told the newspaper, adding she was "not part of anything like that at all," referring to protests against ICE.
"She was extremely compassionate. She's taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate."
Public records show Good had recently lived in Kansas City, where she and another woman with the same home address had started a business last year called B. Good Handywork.
Good and her family were "lovely," a former neighbour in Kansas City told CNN affiliates KCTV and KMBC.
She was "a neighbour who, you know, is not a terrorist. Not an extremist," Joan Rose told KMBC, according to CNN. "That was just a mom who loved her kids, loved her spouse."
A neighbour in Minneapolis, Mary Radford, told the Star Tribune she would miss seeing the family.
"It's a beautiful family. They have a son. He's very sweet. He loves our dog. He always has to go run up and pet and play with her," Radford said. "They're always outside playing."
An online fundraiser for Good's spouse and son had raised nearly $1.5 million US by Friday morning.
"Renee was pure sunshine, pure love. She will be desperately missed," wrote crowdfunding organizer Mattie Weiss.
With files from CBC News and Reuters
