An Emmy-winning queer journalist says she was shoved and pepper-sprayed by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday while reporting on the aftermath of Alex Pretti’s death.

As has been widely reported, Pretti, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and intensive care nurse who worked at the Minneapolis VA hospital, was killed Saturday morning by federal agents who reportedly shot him 10 times after they’d already wrestled him to the ground and disarmed him. Pretti’s death — the second at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis this month — and the Trump administration’s lies about the circumstances that led to it have sparked outrage and protest, both in Minnesota and around the country.

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According to local NBC affiliate KARE TV and our sibling site Queerty, reporter Jana Shortal was reporting on the scene in the immediate aftermath of Pretti’s killing. She described a tense atmosphere as some 75 to 100 members of the community poured onto the street and began to clash with federal agents.

Shortal explained that she remained behind crime scene tape and that her press credentials were clearly visible — as can be seen in a video she later posted to Instagram. At some point, she said, “a couple of border patrol agents decided to move the [crime scene tape]” back.

“They started to just aggressively say ‘Move back,’ but nobody knew what was happening,” Shortal explained. “I’m moving back, walking backwards on the pavement in my boots and apparently [I] was not fast enough. And so, an agent probably twice my size pushed me pretty hard and I said, ‘Don’t push me, I’m press.’”

Shortal said the agent pushed her again, even as she shouted that she was with the press, and continued to back up as instructed. That’s when she says a chemical irritant “went almost directly into my left eye.” Shortal noted that she did not see where the irritant came from.

In a video posted to her Instagram page, Shortal stressed that she was, at all times during the interaction, behind the crime scene tape. “I played by the rules doing my job,” she wrote in the post’s caption. “They did not.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jana Shortal (@janashortal)

On KARE, Shortal said that in the moments leading up to the incident, she only saw one Minneapolis Police Department officer on the scene. The officer, she said, approached a federal agent asking to speak to his supervisor. The agent, Shortal said, did not appear to know who was in charge, but allowed the officer to cross the crime scene tape anyway.

“I just can’t imagine for that police officer, even those agents— There was a shooting, clearly, where a man died. There are hundreds of people now coming on each city block from each area. This is a dense, dense, dense part of the city. And nobody knows who the supervisor is or who’s in charge,” she said. “It’s just terrifying.”

She described the scene as “chaotic.”

“It seemed like everything was happening on a reactionary basis and that is what concerns me,” Shortal said, adding that “Someone has to take control of this situation, because it is dangerous.”

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