ICE agents at the scene of the shooting. Photo by Chad Davis.
Christine Flowers: Reaching a conclusion about Renee Good’s killing
It finally dawned on me that the connections we make on social media have absolutely nothing to do with reality.
This is why I never tried online dating.
I know people who found love that way including a few “silver singles” who managed to excavate that one rare diamond from the relationship tar pits — excuse the mixed metaphors — but the internet is more subterfuge than substance.
This column isn’t about that sort of love. It’s about the equally important friendship connections that fill the empty spaces in our hearts.
Social media is quite worthless as a conduit to platonic happiness.
Maybe I’m naïve. I abandoned Twitter/X a while ago, after I received some rather shady email threats because of my writing.
Of course, the same sort of people who issue death threats are the same ones who buy generic dog food for their elderly Labrador, so I’m pretty sure they’re too cheap to actually buy a plane ticket or gas up the car to come after me in person.
I held on to Facebook and some “friends” who I’d never actually met, but who seemed like the kind of people I’d share coffee and chicken soup with, the sort of people who would be kind enough not to point out that I used a dangling participle in this sentence.
They are Catholic like me, so they’d know, but they’d maintain a polite grammatical silence.
I held onto them, even though we disagreed on some political issues, even though they were pro-choice, even though they supported the legalization of pot and even though in some cases, they supported the New York Giants.
I was unable to continue conversations with Dallas fans, however, finding that this was a bridge too far over the Rio Grande for this Philly girl.
But this past week, an ICE agent shot a woman in the face because she disobeyed a traffic order where he yelled at her to “get out of the f*****g car!” and some of the aforementioned “friends” didn’t see this as a crime, much less a tragedy.
A few of them mumbled platitudes about how it was “sad” or “regrettable” that she was killed but that, after all, she had rammed a law enforcement agent with her car so he was justified in making her six-year-old an orphan.
There are a lot of things in life that have shocked me, and I’m no Pollyanna, but this one hurt.
I always tried to take a rather balanced view of the extremists on both sides of the political aisle, giving a bit more charity to my fellow travelers on the right.
And I have won awards for writing about the dangerous job that police officers confront on a daily basis, including one from the National Association of Black Journalists for a piece on the murder of Philly Police Sgt. Robert Wilson, killed on his son’s birthday while trying to disrupt a robbery in progress.
I sometimes get yelled at from police cars with the windows rolled down with officers “thanking” me by name for my support.
I have law enforcement in my family.
And every time I pass by the brass plaque dedicated to the memory of Danny Faulkner, gunned down in cold blood by the racist amateur journalist Wesley Cook, a/k/a Mumia Abu Jamal, I say a prayer and I spit into the wind at the thought of his murderer.
But I’m not blind.
I have seen as many Zapruder videos of what happened this week in Minneapolis as possible, and I talked to law enforcement officers who know about the protocols, and I thought back on the ICE agents that I have known for over 20 years who would never have done anything like this, and I’m convinced that Renee Good was unjustly killed.
I am not a criminal attorney, so I cannot say “murdered.”
I can’t authoritatively discuss the grades of culpability.
What I do know is that shooting a woman in the face, a person who has not aimed her car at you but was in fact turning in the other direction, who was not, in fact, blocking a roadway but had let other cars pass, who was not in fact a “domestic terrorist” is an illegal act.
Sadly for me, there are a lot of people who disagree.
Most of them are not in law enforcement, but they are supporters of this administration’s draconian policies with respect to immigration.
And while I could understand their confusion about whether Kilmar should be deported, and I sympathize with their anger at criminal aliens, I have no stomach for anyone who thinks shooting a mother in the face is an acceptable response to anything in this world.
This article originally appeared in the Delco Times.
Christine Flowers can be reached at cflowers1961@gmail.com.
This is a difficult situation for many to understand and I may be one of them. I have read that the officer who fired had been previously dragged by a car in another incident. Should this have cautioned ICE officials not to put him in such a position again? I don’t know. The established law enforcement in Minneapolis has been directed not to cooperate with ICE. If they had been present and controlling traffic might this not have happened? I don’t know. The woman who was killed was involved in provocatively working to disrupt ICE operations. Could she have been carried away by the emotion? I don’t know. Can there be a sober discussion of the incident with a suggestion of a path forward? I don’t know.
The Democrat Left is hell-bent on turning this ICE officer into Derek Chauvin.
Thank Goodness that the Right now has a sufficient megaphone to shout “NO!”
Yet another INTENTIONAL example of oligarchs controlling mass media narrative, using hasty generalizations, with the goal of trying to trick people into making broad conclusions about a supposed systemic crisis by way of very small, unrepresentative, and anecdotal samples.
Oligarchs do this with so-called “mass shootings” in an effort to convince society to disarm themselves, and now they are doing it to make it seem like ICE is out of control. Why? Because they want imported cheap labor.
Look it up: A ProPublica investigation found that more than 170 U.S. citizens have been held by immigration agents, with reports of people being detained, kicked, and dragged despite having citizenship. 170?!?! That sounds like a lot, but it is 170/330,000,000. Give me a break.
RIP to Ms. Good and I wish her family the best. Her death isn’t particularly news worthy.
It may be more interesting to note that during the week prior, according to Duck.ai, there were 13 shooting victims in the Greater Philadelphia area followed with no reported shootings in the week of January 5 to January 11, 2026.
You want to blame somebody Christine? Blame the ‘mother’ who foolishly and purposely involved herself to be centrally located in a dangerous situation, accelerating her vehicle directly at an armed Federal officer after being instructed to exit her vehicle. What ‘mother’ would do that intentionally at the behest of her equally culpable wife, while caring little about their children when, at the very LEAST had an almost guarantee to be arrested for interfering in a federal police matter – namely – capturing illegal foreign criminals? That is brazen stupidity and insanity with no consideration for her children. “Hi Mom. Do me a favor and watch my kids while me and Rebecca go screw around with ICE agents while screaming ‘F’ bombs at the Nazis and try to run them over.” I gave you more credit for recognizing leftist insanity, but I see that goes out the window when it mixes in with criminal migrant control deportations.
“…a person who has not aimed her car at you but was in fact turning in the other direction..”
Christine, I respect you, but this is complete hogwash. I’ve heard many others – who I hesitate to label as “liberal”, so let’s just say they’re “pitching for the other team” – claim this same exact thing, thus exonerating Renee Good of all culpability for her reckless actions. We all know that she DID intend to strike that officer with her car WHILE fleeing the scene, AFTER refusing multiple commands to exit her vehicle. How do we know this?
Simple.
It’s virtually IMPOSSIBLE NOT to hit someone standing approximately one foot in front of your car when attempting to drive around them. Why? BECAUSE CARS DON’T TURN AT 90 DEGREE RIGHT ANGLES, THAT’S “WHY”! Cars turn in an arch, NOT at right angles. So what happens if you turn your steering while hard left or hard right, then hit the gas? If continue with the steering wheel in that position you will go around in circles, right? Are there any right angles in a circle? NO!!!
IF you still don’t believe me, we can attempt to recreate what tragically happened in Minneapolis, with you standing approximately one foot from the front of my car (as the officer was, based upon his cell phone video), and I’ll turn my steering wheel hard left & hard right, then hit the gas and attempt to drive around you without hitting you. What do you think the results will be? Care to take me up on that offer? IF so, make sure your health insurance plan is up to date beforehand, because you are going to need it!