I study political violence—particularly how both emerging technologies and mundane tools can be weaponized. For more than a decade, I have analyzed politically motivated vehicle ramming attacks (VRAs) across ideologies and contexts. I am leading a multiyear research grant on the topic, which draws from more than 500 cases worldwide and systematically codes open-source reports, video footage, court documents, and other primary materials. The goal is to identify patterns, distinguish intent from ambiguity, and understand how the tactic spreads.
As a result of this work, I have watched and analyzed an uncomfortable amount of vehicle ramming footage, ranging from the earliest cases during the First Intifada in the late 1980s to the Jan. 1, 2025, New Orleans truck attack that killed 15 people. Based on my experience, I do not believe that Renee Nicole Macklin Good sought to deliberately harm Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Jan. 7, 2026, before he fired three shots into her SUV as it moved past him.
I am deeply alarmed that Trump administration officials rushed to frame the incident as a deliberate vehicle-ramming attack, weaponizing the language of terrorism to legitimize a killing that, by all visible evidence, does not meet that threshold.
Intentional vehicle-ramming attacks display a consistent operational signature across the hundreds of cases that I have studied. We typically see a purposeful approach line toward a target, visible commitment to that line, steering corrections that track a moving individual or group, acceleration at or before the point of contact, and follow-through after impact. These indicators distinguish incidents where a vehicle is actively used as a weapon from those where it merely moves through a space.
In the footage that I’ve reviewed of the Good shooting, including video recorded by Ross on his cellphone, none of the typical indicators of an intentional vehicle-ramming attack are present: The SUV does not accelerate toward Ross, nor does it track him as a target; instead, the vehicle appears to be turning away from the ICE officer at the moment that the shots are fired. This interpretation is supported by independent analyses from media outlets such as the New York Times as well as investigative nongovernmental organizations, such as Index and Bellingcat, all of which suggest that the vehicle was not directed at the agent when he opened fire.
The absence of these indicators erodes the foundation for any claim of deliberate intent and, by extension, the legitimacy of the lethal force that was employed by Ross. In such cases, confident assertions of a vehicle-ramming attack are not forensic findings. They are acts of narrative management, part of a broader pattern in which a VRA becomes a convenient script to retroactively justify excessive and sometimes lethal force.
This reflects what sociologist Stanley Cohen described as the logic of denial, where lethal violence is followed by interpretive and implicatory denials that first reclassify the act, then neutralize its moral and political consequences. The state uses its power to kill its own citizens, then to define reality afterward in a way that insulates itself from consequence.
Institutions turn a contested death into an authorized story of self-defense through official repetition, selective framing, and the early stabilization of intent claims before independent scrutiny can test those claims against the record. In other words, this logic of denial is death squad logic—adapted to American streets—and effectively allows power to convert ambiguity into certainty, and certainty into immunity.
To understand why the claim of VRA is such an effective post hoc justification for state violence, we need to consider how the tactic entered public consciousness. Emerging in the Palestinian territories in the late 1980s, vehicle-ramming attacks gained international prominence in the mid-2010s, when jihadi groups such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State began promoting them in propaganda as low-tech, high-impact methods for lone actors. This led to a series of mass-casualty incidents on European and North American streets.
Over time, vehicle-ramming began to function as a shorthand for terrorism, threat, and justified force. Once a vehicle is seen as a weapon and movement as intent, the need to explain or investigate further often fades. The response becomes automatic. In both public perception and police training, vehicle ramming now signals immediate and ongoing danger. In such cases, a lethal response is not just accepted—it is expected.
This frame is powerful because it is efficient. It supplies imminence, lethality, and moral clarity in one stroke. The claim that “she tried to run me over” collapses distinctions between actual threat and ambiguous movement. It retrofits a high-threat story onto a chaotic scene.
And it does so in terrain where ambiguity is common. Vehicles inch forward, reverse. Drivers cut their wheels away. Commands overlap. Audio is garbled. The scene compresses into seconds. That is precisely the interpretive terrain where intent can be asserted without being demonstrable and where the phrase, “attempted ramming” can outrun evidence.
This interpretive reflex is not uniquely American. Around the world, governments and security forces have routinely deployed the vehicle-ramming frame to justify lethal violence, delegitimize protest, and preempt accountability. In Israel, the term “car attack” is frequently applied to incidents involving Palestinians long before any investigation occurs. In some cases, this framing persists even when subsequent evidence points to unintentional veering, routine traffic accidents, or mechanical failure.
In India, authorities have repeatedly used vehicle-ramming claims to justify the deaths of protesters and dissidents, citing fear for officer safety to explain shootings or fatal stops, even when video evidence indicates little or no threat. In Hong Kong, during the 2019-2020 protests, Chinese state media attempted to frame demonstrators’ interactions with police as deliberate ramming attacks despite no clear evidence of intent. Once applied, the VRA label restructures the narrative. The focus shifts from what actually happened to how it can be made legible within an existing architecture of fear, risk, and legitimacy.
This is the interpretive terrain into which the killing of Good enters. U.S. President Donald Trump publicly framed the shooting as self‑defense and described Good as having “viciously ran over the ICE Officer,” treating intent as settled fact, even though video evidence does not clearly show the officer being struck.
Vice President J.D. Vance echoed this framing, telling Americans that the ICE agent’s actions were justified and claiming that Good’s death was “a tragedy of her own making.” Two hours after the shooting, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem held a press conference where she claimed that Good acted to “weaponize her vehicle, and she attempted to run a law enforcement officer over” and labeled Good’s conduct “domestic terrorism.”
Claiming, with no evidence, that Good used her vehicle as a weapon imports not just a tactical assessment but also a whole counterterrorism logic—a cognitive shortcut with enormous political utility. It shields agencies such as ICE from oversight in a polarized landscape where immigration enforcement is already a flash point. If a death occurs during enforcement, then a narrative that signals legitimacy, deters protest, and rallies political support is not optional; it is operational.
What begins as a post hoc justification in one case risks becoming institutional muscle memory. When narrative certainty replaces factual uncertainty, not only is individual accountability eroded, but new permissions are also quietly written into future encounters. If the label “vehicle-ramming” can foreclose scrutiny once, then it will be ready for use again. The more that it is invoked without verification, the more that it becomes reflex, not just for ICE, but also for any arm of the state that benefits from lethal ambiguity.
We are already seeing the pattern spread. It was reported that one day after Good’s killing, a similar claim was made in Oregon, where a Border Patrol agent alleged that a driver used their vehicle as a weapon. That is not proof of fabrication. But it is proof that a script is circulating. The danger is not just error in one case; it is normalization across cases. The risk is not just of wrongful death—it is of a governance system that replaces transparency with certainty, investigation with narration, and accountability with impunity.