Bright red heart splattered against a black background, pierced through the center. The shooting of Renee Good--what on earth could have set Jonathan Ross off?

I’m trying to imagine myself in the place of Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who killed Renee Good.

He was no untrained recently-recruited ICE agent. He’d been in various armed services for 20 years, including the Border Patrol and the National Guard. He’d served as a gunner for convoys during the Iraq War (though may not have actually seen combat there). According to the New York Times, he was “part of a cohort inside ICE known as the Special Response Team that is trained to handle more dangerous situations.”

Last June, as he attempted to arrest a Mexican man who’d been convicted of sexual abuse in Minnesota, Ross was dragged nearly the length of a football field by the fleeing car. Ross had shattered a window and reached inside the vehicle which, according to use-of-force experts interviewed by the Times, was an action that went against standard law enforcement training, as did placing himself seven months later in front of Renee Good’s vehicle. From the June incident, Ross suffered injuries that, according to the Times, “required 33 stitches across his face and limbs.”

I imagine that, steeped in a harsh militaristic world for nearly his entire adult life, and having recently known traumatic violence, Ross carried emotional vulnerabilities he was completely unconscious of.

Renee’s wife, Rebecca Good, goaded him: You want to come at us? You want to come at us? I say go get yourself some lunch, big boy.”

But then, as we all saw in the video, Renee’s aspect toward him was much gentler: “It’s okay, dude. I’m not mad at you.”

I’m assuming these words had some impact on him because he responded mere moments later by shooting her in the face three times and then calling her a “fucking bitch.”

What on earth could have set him off?

Maybe he was “triggered” by Rebecca’s scorn. Macho men do not like being ridiculed.

But then maybe Renee pierced him even deeper because she addressed him with genuine sympathy. Perhaps she even touched his heart in that moment, in a way that made him feel emotionally raw and exposed, though this was entirely unconscious.

Perhaps it made him feel pathetic. Perhaps it sparked his worst fear, that this strange woman saw right through to the trembling helpless needful love-starved infant inside him. And that was why he shot her. And called her a fucking bitch. Because it was intolerable.

Psychopathic rage born of shame. That’s my take.