Susan McAllister can still see Alex Pretti, who was her music student all four years he attended Green Bay Preble High School, standing in the bass section of the choir.
“My heart is broken under Alex’s death. And of course, like everybody else, I am deeply angry,” McAllister said at a meeting of the Green Bay School Board held on Jan. 26. “But I am also so, so proud of the young man I knew.”
McAllister was one of seven people to speak about Pretti, the man shot and killed by a federal agent on Jan. 24, at the meeting. They joined a growing chorus of people publicly remembering the man that he was during his life.
Susan Carlson, who taught Pretti in middle school, said in a statement read at the meeting that “at his core, Alex was a helper . . . I’m not one bit surprised that his final act on Earth was to help a woman who had been viciously thrown to the ground, and that his last words were, ‘Are you OK?’” Carslon wrote.
Micayla Pretti, Pretti's younger sister, released a statement on Jan. 27 saying that her brother, "always wanted to make a difference in this world."
