A GoFundMe started Saturday has raised nearly $50,000 for the left-wing protester accused of shooting a Georgia State Patrol Officer in At...
A GoFundMe started Saturday has raised nearly $50,000 for the left-wing protester accused of shooting a Georgia State Patrol Officer in Atlanta last week.
The protester, identified in the GoFundMe fundraiser as Manuel Páez Terán, was shot and killed by police on Wednesday after he allegedly shot the trooper, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) said. The activist’s death sparked unrest in Atlanta over the weekend. During a press conference, GBI Director Mike Register said that law enforcement had begun removing people from a months-long protest in a forested area where a proposed law enforcement training center was to be built.
While police attempted to remove protesters, Páez Terán allegedly “without warning shot a Georgia State Patrol Trooper,” Register said, according to CNN.
“The individual who fired upon law enforcement and shot the trooper was killed in an exchange of gunfire,” the director added.
In a news release issued on Friday, the GBI provided additional details about the shooting, including a photo of the handgun it says was used to shoot the trooper. Police said “the projectile recovered from the trooper’s wound matches Teran’s handgun.”
An earlier press release from Wednesday explained that police officers “located a man inside a tent in the woods” and “gave verbal commands to the man who did not comply and shot a Georgia State Patrol Trooper.”
“Other law enforcement officers returned fire, hitting the man,” the GBI said in the press release. “Law enforcement evacuated the Trooper to a safe area. The man died on scene. The injured Georgia State Patrol Trooper was taken to a local hospital where he underwent surgery. A handgun and shell casings were located at the scene. The GBI is working the officer involved shooting and the investigation is still active and ongoing.”
In addition, police said they retrieved “mortar style fireworks, multiple edged weapons, pellet rifles, gas masks, and a blow torch” from the protest area, though police did not say that any of these items belonged to Páez Terán.
Activists involved in the protest have insisted that Páez Terán did not open fire on police, with Defend the Atlanta Forest writing on Twitter that it believes “the officer shot today was hit by ‘friendly fire’ and not by the protester who was killed.”
Another activist, Kamau Franklin of Community Movement Builders, told left-wing outlet Democracy Now! that Páez Terán, whom activists refer to as a “forest defender,” most likely didn’t fire at the police.
“To our knowledge so far, we find it less than likely that the police version of events is what really happened, the idea that he was sitting in a tent and fired out of the tent at basically a SWAT team, DeKalb County police, the Atlanta police and Georgia state troopers, who were there in great numbers to do the raid that they conducted in the park,” Franklin said.
GoFundMe in the past has removed fundraisers for right-leaning causes, including the “Freedom Convoy,” claiming the website had “evidence” that the protest was no longer peaceful, without divulging any of that alleged evidence. GoFundMe also removed a fundraiser for the legal defense of Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted of murder charges in the shooting deaths of three people in Kenosha, Wisconsin, back in 2020 in what video evidence showed was self-defense. In removing the Rittenhouse fundraisers, GoFundMe explained on Medium that its “Terms of Service prohibit raising money for the legal defense of an alleged violent crime.”
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