What has burned itself into my memory is not the moment Alex Pretti is shot. It is what comes before.

You see a person whose body is already overwhelmed. Pushed, shoved, beaten, blinded by pepper spray. Eyes burn, breath is gone, orientation collapses. And yet something very remarkable happens.

Alex Pretti does not move away. He moves toward another person. Toward the woman who had been knocked to the ground moments before. There is no hesitation. What you see is a reflex older than any situation. Stay. Step forward. Do not leave someone alone.

He is not trying to save himself. He is trying to help. Despite pain. Despite fear. Despite chaos. As if something inside him is saying: don’t retreat. Don’t look away.

In that moment, the woman is simply a human being in danger. And he does not respond with flight, but by turning toward her. With responsibility. His actions say: I am here.

That Alex Pretti is shot at exactly this moment is what is truly shattering. The obscenity. Not some random escalation. Not a confusing split second. But the erasure of a human being at the very moment he is actively protecting. At the exact moment he places himself between violence and another person.

What ends there is not only a life. It is an attitude. A form of humanity that does not collapse under massive pressure, but moves outward. And perhaps that is what is hardest about these images. To watch someone die while doing nothing other than being there to help.

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” George Orwell in 1984

I accompany grieving people in the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region. Other regions are of course also possible.

©️Patricia Rind

I am Patricia Rind, and I write about grief, death, farewell, and life.