City Council member wants Justice Department investigation into deadly training facility shooting

ATLANTA — An Atlanta City Council member wants the Justice Department to investigate the deadly police shooting at the future Atlanta Public Safety Training Center.

State troopers shot and killed Manuel Teran back in January. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said he fired at troopers first, wounding one of them.

Teran was one of several protestors troopers were trying to clear from the property at the time.

This week, The DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s Office released the official autopsy report for Teran.

The 31-page report from DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s Office said Teran had at least 57 gunshot wounds. It does not say how many actual shots were fired nor did it determine the position that Teran was in.

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The autopsy also said there was no gunshot residue “observed” on his hands, but they swabbed his hands for the GBI to perform lab tests for gunshot residue.

Atlanta City Council member Liliana Bakhtiari called for a federal investigation on Thursday and said that the autopsy “raised even more questions about the official accounts” of Teran’s death.

“The timelines reported by law enforcement had already proven to be contradictory and with this new information from DeKalb’s autopsy report showing no gunshot residue on Tort’s hands, but at least 57 individual gunshot wounds, they have proven that their word cannot be trusted,” she said.

Another council member said that the “piecemeal drip of information” and conflicting narratives over the shooting have increased criticism of the controversial $90-million training center project.

The GBI previously said that a firearm purchased by Teran has been tied to the bullet that wounded a trooper and that he purchased the gun in 2020.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution contributed to this article.

RELATED NEWS:

Expert breaks down what autopsy report shows in deadly shooting of man at training facility site Manuel Teran was shot more than 50 times in January, during a raid of a forest area at the planned site for the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center.

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