The night didn’t end when the gunfire stopped. It only changed shape. In the hours after, Alex Pretti’s name became a currency traded by strangers who never knew his voice. Commentators spoke with the calm of experts, slicing his fear into talking points, stitching his last seconds into arguments they’d been waiting years to win. He was no longer allowed to be confused, or scared, or wrong. He was only allowed to be useful. Every clip, every still frame, every slowed-down second pulled him further from the person he had actually been and deeper into the versions they needed him to represent. By the time the sirens were just a memory, the verdict had already been written, not by a jury of peers, but by a country that preferred symbols over complicated, inconvenient human lives.
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