❝ She lived by an overarching belief: there is kindness in the world and we need to do everything we can to find it where it resides and nurture it where it needs to grow. ❞
❝ We had whistles.They had guns. ❞
I. THE MOMENT THEY DECIDED KINDNESS WAS A THREAT
Renee Nicole Good was 37.
A mother. A neighbor. A woman whose wife said she sparkled.
She was sitting in her maroon SUV when federal agents surrounded her.
They said they feared for their lives.
The videos say otherwise.
The wheels turned away from the agent.
The shots came anyway.
The state called it justified.
The city called it unnecessary.
The truth is simpler:
They killed a woman who stopped to protect her neighbors.
II. THE MACHINE THAT ALWAYS DEMANDS A BODY
ICE was running raids.
People were scared.
Renee and her wife stopped to witness, to support, to be present.
They brought whistles.
The agents brought rifles.
The machine insists it was protocol.
The machine insists it was fear.
The machine insists it was milliseconds and angles and “perceived threat.”
But the machine always insists.
It never explains why kindness keeps ending up dead.
III. THE AFTERMATH THEY DIDN’T PLAN FOR
Her wife spoke.
Her community rose.
Her name spread across the country.
Her memorial filled with candles and fury.
A fundraiser crossed over a million dollars because people recognized what was taken:
a mother,
a partner,
a neighbor,
a woman who believed in care in a country that keeps proving it doesn’t.
And then the disinformation began —
claims she wasn’t local,
claims she drove in to interfere,
claims she was something other than a resident,
other than a witness,
other than a human being.
Erasure is always the second violence.
IV. THE PRECISION OF WHAT THEY DID
There is a difference between chaos and choice.
A difference between panic and pattern.
A difference between a mistake and a killing.
Renee was shot three times in the head.
Those were bullets — not rubber, not warnings, not confusion.
Three rounds to the head is not hesitation.
It is intent.
Bullets do not evolve.
They travel exactly where they are aimed.
And these were aimed at her head.
V. THE KINDNESS THEY COULD NOT COMPUTE
Before they reduced her to “a female driver,” she was a whole world.
She had a laugh that filled a room.
A way of listening that made people feel like their fear wasn’t an inconvenience
but a signal worth answering.
She worried about bills.
About dinner.
About whether she was doing enough to make the world less cruel for her kid.
She believed you don’t walk past suffering and call yourself good.
The report didn’t mention any of that.
It only knew how to say:
“Subject.”
“Vehicle.”
“Threat.”
Language as erasure. Language as a second killing.
VI. THE WIFE WHO LOVED HER INTO MEMORY
Her wife did not sign up to become a public witness to state violence.
She signed up to grow old with a woman who sparkled.
Now she is the one who has to repeat the story —
for journalists,
for lawyers,
for strangers online who want to argue about angles instead of grief.
She became the archive before the archive had a name.
She holds the photos,
the voice messages,
the rituals,
the mornings that used to begin without the ghost of a gunshot in them.
Every time she says,
“She radiated kindness,”
she reclaims a piece of what they tried to flatten.
VII. THE CHILD WHO NOW LIVES IN THE AFTERMATH
There is a child in this story
who did not choose to be part of a lesson about state power.
A child who will grow up knowing their mother died
because she refused to look away from someone else’s fear.
Birthdays with one person missing.
Graduations with an empty seat.
Holidays that feel edited —
someone spliced out of the frame.
They will inherit not only the trauma
but also the truth:
Their mother died not because she didn’t care about them, but because she cared about everyone.
VIII. THE COMMUNITY THAT REFUSED TO LET HER VANISH
Fear teaches people to shrink.
To stay quiet.
To avoid the places where guns and badges gather.
But they didn’t.
They came with candles,
flowers,
handwritten notes.
They told stories on porches,
in living rooms,
on livestreams.
They repeated her name like a spell,
like a refusal,
like a shield.
Collective memory is the only counter‑power they have.
And they used it.
IX. THE PHONE THAT BECAME THE ONLY BODY CAM THAT MATTERED
There should have been body cams.
There should have been multiple angles,
clear audio,
an unbroken record.
Instead, there was a phone.
A trembling hand that refused to look away.
That footage is the reason the world knows:
she wasn’t charging,
wasn’t accelerating,
wasn’t a threat.
She was a woman in a car
surrounded by armed agents
who fired into her head.
The phone became the only honest witness.
X. THE ASYMMETRY OF FEAR
The state says it was afraid.
The agent says he was afraid.
The report says there was no time.
But what about their fear?
The neighbors watching raids.
The undocumented families hearing boots.
The woman who pulled over
because she saw something wrong
and could not, in good conscience,
drive away.
Only one side is allowed to say
“I feared for my life”
and expect to be believed.
❝ They did not fear for their lives. They feared her presence. And so they ended hers. ❞
❝ Kindness is not a threat.
Fear is not a justification.
And the dead deserve more than the state’s excuses. ❞