A second autopsy of 26-year-old environmental activist Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, who was shot and killed by the Georgia State Patrol on January 18, shows their hands were raised when they were killed.

Terán, who went by the name Tortuguita and used third-person plural pronouns, was killed in an Atlanta-area forest while police cleared an encampment of activists who oppose the construction of Atlanta's "Cop City," a planned Public Training Safety Facility. The facility will cost $90 million and take up 85 acres of land in the South River Forest, which is an important area of green space. The City of Atlanta has described the forest as one of the city's four "lungs." 

Activists have cited a number of concerns, from environmental protection to confronting police power. They contend the project will jeopardize the forest, which is surrounded by mainly Black and Hispanic communities. Most protests have been peaceful, but some have attracted media attention and several dozen activists have been arrested for damaging buildings and cop cars in opposition to the project. Tortuguita was one of the forest defenders camping out on the site to prevent its development.

"Both Manuel's left and right hands show exit wounds in both palms. The autopsy further reveals that Manuel was most probably in a seated position, cross-legged when killed," lawyers said in a press release. Last month, Tortuguita's family said they were shot at least a dozen times.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation says officers killed Tortuguita in self-defense after Tortuguita shot a state trooper, but the City of Atlanta released videos in which an officer suggests the trooper may have been injured by friendly fire.

The Atlanta Police Department said that the "officers had no immediate knowledge of the events at the shooting site" before making their comments, and the GBI said that officer's speculation is not evidence.

"Imagine the police killed your child," said Belkis Terán, Tortuguita's mother. "And now then imagine they won't tell you anything. That is what we are going through." 

The GBI hasn't released the government's autopsy report or met with Tortuguita's family, and it blocked the City of Atlanta from releasing more video evidence. There's no body camera or dashcam footage of the shooting, according to the GBI, and they claim that ballistics evidence shows the bullet that injured the trooper came from a gun belonging to Tortuguita. The Terán family has sued for the release of more information under the Georgia Open Records Act.

Those who knew Tortuguita say the details offered by authorities don't match the person they knew. In interviews, while they were still alive, Tortuguita expressed a commitment to nonviolence.  Tortuguita's mother remembers them cleaning beaches in Panama, where their family is from, and of them feeding and sheltering people everywhere they lived.

"I'm suffering," she said. "But this suffering is giving to me power — power to fight, power to stand."