Manuel Paez Terán’s last word was: “Help.” It wasn’t spoken; it was sent by text. From another location in the same forest where Paez Terán – or “Tortuguita”– was camping in a tent, someone texted back: “What do you need?”
Seconds later, Tortuguita – Spanish for “Little Turtle”– was dead. Six Georgia state patrol troopers shot Paez Terán with at least 14 bullets, leaving 57 wounds. The 26-year-old had been sleeping in tents and tree houses in a public park for months, along with dozens of other “forest defenders” in protest against a $90m police and fire department training center known as “Cop City”, planned for another part of the forest less than a mile away.
Later the same day, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), the agency that organized the operation in the forest involving at least a half-dozen state and federal law enforcement agencies, announced its version of events: the activist fired a gun first, wounding an officer. That officer and others who shot and killed the activist were not wearing body cams.
On Friday morning, district attorney George Christian, the prosecutor selected to review the events of 18 January, issued a 31-page report concluding the shooting was “objectively reasonable”, meaning no criminal charges will be brought against the troopers. It is the first case in US history of police killing an environmental activist while protesting.
Paez Terán’s family had come to Georgia last week from Panama, Chicago and Houston, to meet with Christian, after asking for nearly 10 months for a meeting with a state official. The Guardian spoke with the family, close friends and other forest defenders, to develop a more detailed sense than has been previously reported about Tortuguita’s last days, and the events of 18 January and afterward. Several insisted on anonymity, as the state has recently indicted 61 people on Rico, or conspiracy charges, in connection with the movement.
What emerges is a portrait of a small number of activists outnumbered by police at 10 to one or more, with Tortuguita alone and isolated. Several confirmed that the activist had bought a gun – to help protect their LGBTQ community, they said, increasingly threatened in recent months. Those interviewed questioned the state’s account of the shooting. Nearly all felt some sort of guilt about surviving, while Paez Terán is dead.
The family and public has only seen selectively released information to date, all supporting the state’s version of events – a notable exception being police bodycam videos taken nearby, in which you can hear officers wondering aloud if there had been friendly fire. A press release accompanying Friday’s announcement says all records used to investigate Paez Terán’s death will not be made available through open records requests until the state’s prosecution of dozens of people in connection with Cop City is completed – which may last years.
Tortuguita’s death galvanized a broad-based movement already in its third year that includes grassroots activists, academics, environmentalists, teachers, lawyers and unions, who share concerns about climate change, police abuse of power and environmental racism. Related movements soon took inspiration from Tortuguita’s activism, converting “Viva Tortuguita” into a rallying cry across the US and the world.
Vienna Forrest met Tortuguita, who used they/them pronouns, in late summer. “They were joyful and intelligent – I could tell they had passion and strong convictions,” she said.
The two took street medic training together. They were committed to protecting the forest, which “has a magic”, she said. They would sit together in a field at sunset and “have some of our deepest talks” – the same field where dozens of police entered the forest months later, en route to Tortuguita’s tent.
“One thing, kind of haunting,” Forrest said. “We had conversations about death – and they always said it would be at the hands of the state.” This, she said, was because of Paez Terán’s identity as a Venezuelan-born, brown and queer activist.
Forrest was one of five arrested on 12 December in the forest, the first group the state would saddle with domestic terrorism charges. The number would grow to 42 in the coming months – another historic first. Those 42 are now among the 61 indicted on state Rico charges.
Forrest was released from jail days before New Year’s. The two spent as much time together as possible, although she was prohibited from returning to the forest by her bond conditions, and Tortuguita was committed to staying among the trees. In mid-January, they went to see M3gan, a sci-fi movie, at a drive-in several miles from the forest. They joked about it afterward, and never saw each other again.
Around the same time, on 16 January, Belkis Terán had her last conversation with Manuel. “They had been sick with the flu, and were staying at a friend’s but started feeling better around the 11th,” Terán said. “‘I can stay in the forest now,’ they told me. For them, the forest was their home. ‘I’m praying for you,’ I said. ‘I feel God in the forest,’ they told me. They felt the presence of God in the trees, in the animals, in the sounds at night.”
Meanwhile, Paez Terán was returning to a changed place since the December arrests, said Charley Tennenbaum. Police had destroyed many tents close to Tortuguita’s camp, which they had set up months earlier as a place for people of color to stay. The camp was empty that day. Also, “the number of people was in decline,” said Tennenbaum, who was arrested in late April in a rural county 50 miles (80km) north-west of Atlanta, after putting flyers on mailboxes in a neighborhood where one of the state troopers who shot Tortuguita lived.
All those who spoke with the Guardian said there were between 10 and 20 forest defenders in the park on 18 January, which stretches across about 140 acres.
That morning, Sparkles had the job of listening to police scanner traffic from his house in Atlanta, a chore some in the “Stop Cop City” movement started about six months earlier, after police began coming through the forest, destroying tents. The idea: by listening to scanners, a rotating crew could determine if there was any kind of police activity in or around the forest, and give warnings by encrypted chat.
“[The raid in] December underscored the necessity to stay on top of things, to provide early warning,” Sparkles said. “There were conversations about … [the] worst possible outcome: Someday, someone is going to get hurt. We wanted to avoid direct interactions with the police.”
That morning, at about 6.30am, a Swat team began assembling at a nearby park, according to a police incident report. In the same report, a commander refers repeatedly to the people who they were tasked with getting out of the forest as “domestic terrorists” and “extremely dangerous and violent in general”. At the time, none of the handful of people arrested and charged with domestic terrorism a month earlier had even been indicted; incidents the state referred to as “violent” included destruction of construction equipment and throwing rocks at police.
Within about an hour, Sparkles heard talk on the scanner of arrests, and then of an “officer in need of help.” There were calls for an ambulance. He was also getting messages about forest defenders hearing gunshots. One thing stood out: the way police talked about the “shooter” who had wounded the officer.
“There’s a different response when officers are under attack,” said Sparkles, adding that he has listened to police scanners for hundreds of hours. “When the threat is subdued, there’s a sense of relief, of jubilation. That didn’t happen. Instead, they were avoiding talking about the shooter.”
Another thing: Sparkles was supposed to start his scanner shift that day at 4am, but overslept a couple of hours. He has “felt guilt about not being up earlier,” and has been getting help through therapy.
At the same time Sparkles was trying to interpret scanner chatter, Sea Moss was stirred from sleep in a hut he was building at the foot of a water oak tree. “I heard shouting, some all-terrain vehicles. I immediately went up in the tree. I heard shooting … you could hear an ambulance come … I remember hearing through a chat that a cop was shot and a forest defender was killed. I had a suspicion it was them, with the direction the shots were coming from.”
“I sort of regret not checking up on them,” Sea Moss said. “I don’t know why they were there, all alone.”
Marcos had grown close to Tortuguita since they met at an event about keeping queer people and people of color safe in November, shortly after a shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado. With a military background, Marcos spoke to Tortuguita about their gun, which the activist had gotten “for community defense”.
Marcos, who also uses they/them pronouns, lives about a mile from Tortuguita’s camp, and was going to meet their friend 18 January, but first had to do a morning interview with a researcher about the “Stop Cop City” movement. The two were sitting in Marcos’ kitchen when cellphone messages started arriving about a police “raid” in the forest. They asked the interviewer if he could make it quick. Then, Marcos heard a handful of blasts, followed by dozens of rounds of rapid fire.
The veteran said they “feel survivor’s guilt” after Tortuguita’s death and the Veterans Administration diagnosed them in March with depression and PTSD.
Authorities did not identify the person killed but after night fell, when no one had heard from Tortuguita, Vienna put out the word. By the next morning, Terra, who had befriended Tortuguita when they lived in Tallahassee, Florida, got the news. She had met Belkis, who visited Manuel when they lived in Florida and worked on community gardening and helping people living in the streets.
Terra texted Manuel’s mother: “I’m so sorry. You raised such a powerful child. They’re not going to die in vain.”
Belkis answered: “What happened?”
“My heart sank,” Terra said. “I realized I was going to have to break the news to her. I called and explained the few details we had … trying to break it to her through tears.”
As for the results of the state’s investigation, Belkis said: “I would like to have true facts. That’s what bothers me, not knowing.” At the same time, she said, “no matter how the case is resolved, nothing will bring Manuel back … For me, justice would be for people to follow Manuel’s example – their love for the earth, for their friends, for forgotten people.”
