Wendy Grossman Kantor is an award-winning journalist who has contributed to PEOPLE for over 20 years. She reports on topics of human interest, health, crime and politics.
Renee Good, the woman shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, is remembered by a childhood friend as someone “you could trust.”
“[Good] was one of those people, genuinely, you could be yourself around and she would keep your secrets and you could trust her,” Good’s friend, Megan Shirley, tells PEOPLE. “And when I think about her, I really just remember feeling like she was a safe friend for me.”
Shirley went to elementary and middle school with Good, 37, and recalls that they used to write and sing songs together, even starting a band called Ivy.
“She was really good with words, which it didn’t surprise me when I did read that she had won a poetry award later on in life because she was doing it even back then,” Shirley says.
Good was a mother of three children, who had recently moved to the Twin Cities with her wife, not long before her death.
Multiple videos have emerged of the fatal shooting and Good’s interaction with ICE agents directly before it.
Good was shot by an agent, later identified as Jonathan Ross, as she was maneuvering her Honda Pilot. After the shots were fired, Good’s vehicle continued moving up the street, away from the agents before crashing into a parked car.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, the Department of Homeland Security claimed Good had “weaponized her vehicle” and that the agent had been acting in self-defense.
But videos of the incident have led many to call DHS’ narrative into doubt. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called the federal agency’s claim “bulls—.”
Shirley was shocked when she learned of her friend’s death and says she does not believe Good was trying to harm anyone with her car.
“There’s no way,” Shirley says. “I really think it was fight or flight type of situation where she was in fight or flight mode and she kind of took off. And I don’t think that it would’ve been on purpose for trying to hurt anyone with her car.”
The aftermath of Good’s death has been “surreal” for Shirley, who was stunned to see her old friend’s picture on the news.
“She didn’t deserve what happened to her,” says Shirley. “And she would’ve brought a lot of good into the world if she was allowed to be here a little bit longer.”
