Don’t fall for supposed ‘hospital photo’ of ICE agent who fatally shot Renee Good

In January 2026, a photo (archived) circulated online that claimed to show the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who fatally shot Renee Good, 37, in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, 2026, sparking nationwide protests of the immigration enforcement agency’s actions.

The photo spread after CBS reported, citing anonymous sources, that the agent who fired the shots suffered internal bleeding.

One X account that shared the photo claiming to show the agent in the hospital wrote, “US Department of Homeland Security release hospital photo of ICE agent who murdered Renee Good after reports of internal bleeding.” The photo showed a person’s arm wearing what appeared to be a hospital bracelet with what was clearly an Apple MacBook charger wire draped across it.

The photo and claim circulated mainly on X (archived), but also appeared on Facebook (archived). Snopes readers searched our site for information about the photo.

While the photo appeared to be real, meaning not generated by artificial intelligence or digitally edited, it did not show the ICE agent who shot Good — or even a person admitted to a hospital. The photo was part of a viral 2016 Twitter (now X) post by Terrell Finner, then a pre-med student at Columbia University. Finner reportedly joked online that he would submit two obviously staged photos to his professor in attempt to avoid an exam. 

The above posting of the photo in January 2026, which had 1.5 million views at the time of this writing, came from an X account that described itself as satire. The photo did not appear on the X feed of the Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is an agency. Therefore, we conclude that social media users who shared the photo in 2026 miscaptioned the image.

According to the Daily Mail, Finner posted the photo with the MacBook charger cable and another that showed him with earphones up his nose in an imitation of oxygen tubes in February 2016. Finner reportedly wrote: “I’m emailing these pics to my chem prof bc I had a nosebleed & had to be hospitalized & can’t take this midterm Wed.”

The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which archives webpages across the internet, showed that a user called @_KingAres, the same username that the Daily Mail credited in its reporting, did make a post on Twitter with an identical caption in February 2016. The Wayback Machine’s snapshot did not show the pictures Finner reportedly attached.

DHS has maintained (archived) that the officer who killed Good, identified by media outlets as Jonathan Ross, “fired defensive shots” because he feared for his life. On X, the DHS claimed Good had “weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them—an act of domestic terrorism.”

Snopes does not rely on anonymous sources, so we could not independently verify CBS’ report that the agent suffered internal bleeding after the encounter during which he fatally shot Good. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem previously said (at 1:32, archived) that the agent received medical treatment at a hospital but that doctors released him after a few hours. Bystander footage from the scene showed the agent walking away following the shooting.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, “internal bleeding,” where blood vessels break and blood collects inside the body, can vary in severity. The term covers anything from bruises to burst aneurysms.

Snopes has reported extensively on Good’s death, including a claim that a DHS officer defaced a memorial to her.

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