Misrepresented and fabricated images spread widely on social media of the of a Minneapolis woman, , by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on Wednesday.
Soon after the shooting, photos emerged erroneously identified as showing the victim, a 37-year-old mother of three. Others were fabricated to falsely show the face of the officer involved or were misrepresented to say he had a Nazi tattoo. And an old video of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was said to show him speaking about the episode.
Here’s a closer look at the facts.
Officer’s name and likeness misidentified
CLAIM: Images show the ICE officer who shot Good without a mask at the scene of the shooting.
THE FACTS: This is false. The images were fabricated. They appear to be screenshots from a video of the shooting, as the background matches the location where it took place. But that footage the officer without a mask.
Hany Farid, a digital forensics and misinformation expert at the University of California, Berkeley, said that the images appear to have been generated by AI and that they are unlikely to reflect what the officer looks like.
鈥淲e have previously studied the application of AI to 鈥榚nhance鈥� facial images,鈥� he said. 鈥淯nder considerably more favorable conditions than in this example of the masked ICE agent, AI enhancement/reconstruction is not consistently reliable.鈥�
He continued: 鈥淚n this situation where half of the face is obscured, AI (or any other technique) is not, in my opinion, able to accurately reconstruct the facial identity.鈥�
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CLAIM: The ICE officer who shot Good is named Steve Grove.
THE FACTS: False. The officer’s name is Jonathan Ross, according to . Ross, an Iraq War veteran, has served for nearly two decades in the U.S. Border Patrol and ICE.
Federal officials have not named the officer, but Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the agent who shot Good had been dragged by a vehicle last June, and a department spokesperson confirmed Noem was referring to the Bloomington, Minnesota, case in which documents identified the injured officer as Ross.
Still, many on social media falsely identified the officer as Grove. Some suggested that specific people with the same name were involved, including the CEO and publisher of the Minnesota Star Tribune. It’s not clear how the name became linked to the shooting.
鈥淲e are currently monitoring a coordinated online disinformation campaign incorrectly identifying the ICE agent involved in yesterday鈥檚 shooting,鈥� the newspaper said in . 鈥淭o be clear, the ICE agent has no known affiliation with the Star Tribune.鈥�
Victim falsely identified in photos
CLAIM: Two photos of a blond woman with a small child show Good.
THE FACTS: False. The photos are of Renee Paquette, a former WWE wrestler, and her daughter.
shows Paquette kneeling on the ground while her daughter hugs her. She posted it to Instagram on International Women鈥檚 Day in 2023, writing that 鈥渞aising a strong, independent, free thinking, confident woman is my main objective.鈥� The shows Paquette kissing her daughter鈥檚 cheek as her daughter sticks out her tongue. It was posted in 2024, on her daughter鈥檚 third birthday.
on one of the posts misrepresenting her photos: 鈥淲rong Ren茅e. My condolences to her family.鈥�
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CLAIM: A photo of a woman with short, pale pink hair wearing a green sweater shows Good.
THE FACTS: False. The woman in the photo is not Good, it is Gabriela Szczepankiewicz. Photos of both women appeared in a from Old Dominion University announcing the winners of a poetry prize.
Szczepankiewicz earned an honorable mention in the undergraduate category for that year’s . Her photo, which with her name, is the first to appear in the Facebook post.
Good 鈥� who is identified as Renee Macklin 鈥� won the undergraduate category. Her photo appears third.
Photo of man with tattoo is not the officer involved in the shooting
CLAIM: An image of a man with a Nazi tattoo on his neck shows the ICE officer who shot Good.
THE FACTS: False. The image, which comes from a video on Jan. 5 鈥� two days before the shooting 鈥� is of a different man. Video of the shooting shows that the ICE officer involved does not have a tattoo in the same place as the man in the image spreading online.
In the Instagram video, a man behind the camera confronts the man with the tattoo outside of a restaurant on Lyndale Avenue South . The tattoo is visible in the first few seconds of the video. It consists of two black lightning bolts that resemble the , which was the Nazi guard, and appears on the right side of the man鈥檚 neck, directly behind his earlobe.
The tattooed man says he 鈥渉ad this done years ago鈥� and that he 鈥渁in’t had no time to change it” as he walks away.
In , the ICE officer who shot Good is seen walking down the street about one minute in with a mask covering the bottom half of his face. He does not have a tattoo behind his right earlobe. In addition, his earlobe is shaped differently than that of the man in the Instagram video.
Video does not show Florida governor discussing the shooting
CLAIM: A video shows Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis defending Good.
THE FACTS: False. The video is from DeSantis did in June on 鈥淭he Rubin Report,鈥� an online political talk show, amid over President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles.
鈥淎nd we also have a policy that if you鈥檙e driving on one of those streets and a mob comes and surrounds your vehicle and threatens you, you have a right to flee for your safety,” DeSantis, a Republican, says in the clip spreading online. “And so if you drive off and you hit one of these people, that鈥檚 their fault for impinging on you. You don鈥檛 have to sit there and just be a sitting duck and let the mob grab you out of your car and drag you through the streets. You have a right to defend yourself in Florida.鈥�
DeSantis was not referring to Good. He was answering a question about Florida’s policies on protests that block roads.
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