Fact Check: Posts claim this image shows Alex Pretti helping 2 disabled veterans. Here’s the truth

Claim:

An image authentically shows intensive care nurse Alex Pretti, who died at the hands of federal agents in January 2026, assisting two disabled veterans during a physical therapy session.

Rating:

Rating: Fake

In the days after federal immigration agents fatally shot 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, online users shared an image (archived) allegedly showing Pretti assisting two disabled veterans — both double amputees with missing legs — during a physical therapy session with parallel bars.

Snopes readers emailed to ask whether the image depicted a genuine photo. For example, one reader sent in the image with the question, “Is this image of Alex Pretti assisting veterans AI?” Another user inquired, “Is the photo of Alex Pretti helping two veterans with amputations to walk real or fake?”

A reverse-image search for the image located numerous posts featuring the alleged photo on Bluesky (archived), Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Reddit (archived), Threads (archived) and X (archived), for example.

(The Lincoln Project/Bluesky)

In short, the image was fake and someone created it with an artificial intelligence (AI) tool. The image displayed several signs of generative AI, and Google Gemini’s SynthID Detector tool also found a digital watermark indicating someone used a Google AI tool for at least part of the image’s creation. As a result, we’ve rated the image fake.

The inauthentic image of Pretti, who worked as an intensive care nurse caring for critically ill veterans for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), circulated in the days after his death on Jan. 24.

Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo uncovered no information about Pretti helping veterans with physical therapy on parallel bars, as the image depicted. Similar searches also failed to locate any news media outlets reporting about or confirming the authenticity of the image, which would be newsworthy if real.

Some of the same users also shared a video from December 2024…

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