Attorneys for the family of Manuel Paez Terán found out from a local reporter about the results of a test to determine if there was gunpowder residue on the killed environmental activist’s hands.
Civil rights attorney Jeff Filipovits said he was “totally caught off guard” by the reporter’s call, especially since the DeKalb county medical examiner’s office – the agency that released the results to the media – had told him and his team two weeks earlier that those same results weren’t yet available and wouldn’t be for some time.
But the results were actually dated 23 January. What’s more, they appeared to reach the opposite conclusion of the county’s recently released autopsy of Paez Terán, the report which brought Filipovits and his team to meet with the agency last month.
The upsetting sequence of events reflects the broader experience of Paez Terán’s family, their attorneys and, by extension, the public in the high-profile case: the city, county and state agencies that are involved have continually delayed, obfuscated about or denied releasing information about the events of 18 January, when, for the first time in US history, police killed an environmental activist while they were protesting.
It also led six state legislators to send a letter to the US Department of Justice last week seeking an independent investigation “that gathers and releases the necessary information to ensure public confidence”.
Paez Terán, or “Tortuguita”, was one of dozens of activists camped in a public park in mid-January protesting against a $90m police and fire department training center known as “Cop City” planned for a part of the South River forest less than a mile away, as well as a developer’s plans to convert 40 acres (16 hectares) of the public park into private land. Paez Terán’s death has catapulted the Cop City project into global headlines.
The results of the test – known as a gunshot residue, or GSR, kit – released last week indicated traces of gunpowder, which “supports the possibility” that Paez Terán fired a gun first, as the police claim. The document also states that “it is possible for victims of gunshot wounds, both self-inflicted and non self-inflicted, to have GSR present on their hands.” The former – that Paez Terán fired first – is the police’s version of what happened that January morning, when dozens of law enforcement officers from multiple agencies swept through the public park to remove the activists.
The results reached the opposite conclusion of a DeKalb county autopsy released two weeks ago, which stated that no observable residue was seen on Paez Terán’s hands. There was no press conference or statement from the county medical examiner explaining how the kit could reach different conclusions, just an unannounced release of each document to media.
The autopsy – which described 57 gunshot wounds and at least 14 bullets being found in or near Paez Terán’s body – provoked public outcry, and the GSR kit results caused what Filipovits described as “whiplash”. The events led state representative Ruwa Romman, one of the legislators to sign the letter to the justice department, to conclude that the state is “clearly in a campaign to confuse – or it might be less nefarious, and a result of a lack of resources and understanding about how to communicate about this important event”.
The recent events caused Romman to add that the “water’s been muddied way too much”, as the release of the GSR test kit results was made more confusing by who released them – the DeKalb medical examiner’s office, when the Georgia bureau of investigation (GBI) is the agency that actually performed the test – and why they were released a week after the autopsy results were made public.
When the Guardian asked the Patrick Bailey, the director of the DeKalb county medical examiner’s office, on 20 April if he had seen or had access to the GSR kit results, he said no. But within a week of that conversation, and after the autopsy’s results had been released – including the observation that gunpowder residue was not seen on Paez Terán’s hands – the agency sent the GSR kit results to a local news agency.
“It looked like damage control,” said Romman.
Asked about this, Bailey said: “We’re not trying to cover up anything – that’s the way it may come across, but that’s not what we’re doing.” Asked about communication between the GBI and the medical examiner before or after the release of the test results, GBI spokesperson Nelly Miles only pointed to her agency having recently concluded their investigation, forwarding materials to a specially selected prosecutor, who must now decide whether the police should face charges in Paez Terán’s death.
The search for information about what happened on 18 January began soon after agents from the Atlanta and DeKalb county police, the Georgia state patrol and the GBU raided the forest, killing Paez Terán and arresting seven others, charging them under a state domestic terrorism law – also a historic first.
The GBI, tasked in Georgia with investigating police shootings, soon revealed that the state patrol officers who shot Paez Terán were not wearing body cams. The GBI also began what would become piecemeal releases of evidence supporting the state’s version of what happened: that Paez Terán had a gun and fired first, wounding a state patrol officer.
All along, attorneys for Paez Terán’s family have requested access to information – including preliminary autopsy results. In most cases, they received no reply. Several agencies denied requests by claiming that the ongoing investigation into the shooting exempted them from open records laws.
On 31 January, Atlanta police informed attorneys for the family of Paez Terán that they would be releasing videos taken near the shooting on a “rolling production basis” over a three-week period, according to correspondence shared by attorneys with the Guardian.
Shortly after, the agency publicly released videos that appeared to show the nearby officers talking among themselves about one officer accidentally shooting another, drawing a flurry of public opinion on social media. The GBI issued a press release on 9 February stating that what the officer said on the video was speculation about what happened, and that “speculation is not evidence.”
On 13 February, the GBI wrote to the Atlanta police chief, Darin Schierbaum, requesting that the agency stop releasing videos. The following day, the Georgia attorney general’s office wrote to Atlanta’s legal department, letting the city know it was exempted from open records laws, even if the police department was not the agency investigating the shooting. On 15 February, the police department wrote the family’s attorneys, indicating that “APD will not be releasing further footage at this time.” Filipovits’s team has sued the city of Atlanta, seeking information.
In this context, “the GBI’s investigation has lost public trust over the last four months,” said state senator Nabilah Islam, who led the effort to seek the justice department’s help in investigating the case.
Islam noted that the apparent lack of policies and procedures, or clarity about the same, may need to be addressed in a future legislative session. “In the absence of a policy, everyone does what’s convenient for themselves,” she said.
Reached at home in Texas, Paez Terán’s brother, Daniel, described his experience with the state’s investigation as “frustrating” for him and his family, who live in Texas, Chicago and Panama.
“It’s a huge mystery, whether everything we’ve been going through is due to malice, or ineptitude,” he said.
