‘Cop City’ activist’s official autopsy reveals more than 50 bullet wounds

Official autopsy results for Manuel Paez Terán, an environmental activist police shot and killed three months ago during a raid in a Georgia public park near the planned site of a police and fire department training center, do little to advance the state's version of events, including the notion that the activist shot first, wounding an officer.

Paez Terán, or "Tortuguita", was one of the "forest defenders" camped throughout the public park less than a mile away from the planned center, known as "Cop City", when dozens of officers entered the South River Forest south-east of Atlanta, Georgia, on 18 January.

The incident was the first time in US history that police have shot and killed an environmental activist while protesting, galvanizing a surging movement to protect the forest and oppose the training center and transforming Paez Terán into an international figure.

The state's narrative since then has been that Paez Terán fired first. The Georgia bureau of investigation (GBI), charged with investigating the killing, has only publicly released evidence to date supporting the idea, including a photo of the firearm allegedly used by the activist, and a purchase record of the gun. The officers who shot Paez Terán were from the Georgia state patrol, who generally do not wear body cameras; the state has said there is no footage of the shooting.

DeKalb county's autopsy, released to the media through open records requests on Wednesday, offers no support for the notion that Paez Terán fired a weapon, stating that "gunpowder residue is not seen on the hands" or clothes of Paez Terán. Residue on the hands might indicate that a person fired a gun, but neither this analysis nor a test known as the GSR kit is foolproof, according to experts.

Patrick Bailey, director of the DeKalb county medical examiner's office, told the Guardian that the county forwarded evidence to the GBI for them to perform the GSR kit, or gunshot residue test.

Nonetheless, the autopsy report does little to clarify what actually happened that day, except for noting in 19 pages of clinical detail the 57 gunshot wounds that Paez Terán received, employing every letter of the alphabet more than once to label the injuries.