THE environmental activist killed by authorities in an Atlanta-area forest last month was shot at least a dozen times, the slain protester’s family said on Monday.

The family of the activist, who went by the name of Tortuguita, are demanding more information from authorities about the killing.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) has said that officers killed Tortuguita in self-defence on January 18 after the protester, whose given name was Manuel Esteban Paez Teran, allegedly shot a state trooper while authorities cleared activists from a forested site.

The site is set to be used for a new $90 million (£75.1m) training facility for local law enforcement, dubbed Cop City by activists.

Tortuguita’s mother, father and brother, as well as their lawyers, say the GBI has been silent instead of responding to the family's pleas for information about the fatal shooting.

Civil rights lawyer Jeff Filipovits said that the details offered by authorities so far do not make sense with those who knew Tortuguita to be a “kind (and) compassionate person,” not a “domestic terrorist,” a charge that has been filed in recent months against nearly 20 protesters accused of being part of the leftist Stop Cop City movement.

Mr Filipovits said that the GBI refuses to say whether there was any audio or video recordings that could have been in use during the incident.

But the GBI has said that no footage of the shooting exists and that ballistics evidence shows that the injured trooper was shot with a bullet from a gun that Tortuguita had legally purchased in 2020.

Mr Filipovits’s law partner Brian Spears said that Tortuguita’s body was released to the family last week and an independent autopsy showed his body was “riddled with bullets.”

Tortuguita had moved from Florida months ago to join the activists in the woods who had been protesting for over a year by camping out at the site and building platforms in surrounding trees.

Self-described “forest defenders” say that building the 85-acre training centre would involve cutting down so many trees that it would be environmentally damaging. 

Local officials have vowed to continue with the project, with Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens announcing last week that land disturbance permits had been approved for the project.

A coalition of more than 1,300 progressive advocacy groups published a letter last week calling for an independent investigation into the killing of Tortuguita and the resignation of Mayor Dickens.