(ATLANTA) — DeKalb County has released the autopsy results related to the death of Manuel Esteban Paez Teran, who demonstrated against the construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center earlier this year.

The training center has been the subject of controversy. City officials assert that the center could improve policing, while critics claim the effort is militarizing police and endangering communities.

Teran, who went by “Tortuguita” and used they/them pronouns, was shot and killed by police on Jan. 18 as officers raided campgrounds occupied by environmental demonstrators who had allegedly been camping out for months to protest the development of the training center, dubbed “Cop City” by critics.

According to the autopsy sent to ABC News, Teran did not have gunpowder residue on their hands. Officials claimed Teran fired the first shot at a state trooper. Officers then responded with gunfire.

Teran had at least 57 gunshot wounds in their body, according to the autopsy, including in the hands, torso, legs and head.

An independent autopsy from the family found that Teran’s hands were raised during the fatal shooting. The Dekalb County autopsy stated, however, “there are too many variables with respect to movement of the decedent and the shooters to draw definitive conclusions concerning Mr. Teran’s body position.”

Teran’s death has been ruled a homicide, according to the DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s Office.

There is no body camera footage of the incident, police said. Officials say investigations into the incident are ongoing.

The Georgia Department of Public Safety told ABC News it cannot comment due to an open and ongoing investigation. ABC News has also reached out to the legal team of Teran’s family for comment.

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(HEBRON, N.Y.) — The dad of 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis, who was shot and killed in the passenger seat of a friend’s car when they turned into the wrong driveway, is demanding justice.

“Their friend that they were going to see was a half-mile down the road,” her father, Andrew Gillis, told reporters Wednesday afternoon. “For this man to sit on his porch and fire at a car that posed no threat is just — angers me so badly. And I just hope to God that he dies in jail.”

On Saturday night, Kaylin Gillis and her friends mistakenly pulled into the driveway of 65-year-old Kevin Monahan in rural Hebron, New York, while they were looking for a friend’s house, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office said.

Monahan fired at least two shots toward the group and fatally hit the 20-year-old, authorities said. Andrew Gillis said his daughter’s boyfriend was driving at the time of the shooting.

“There was no reason for Mr. Monahan to feel threatened, especially as it appears the vehicle was leaving at the time,” Washington County Sheriff Jeffrey Murphy said.

Monahan was initially “uncooperative with the investigation and refused to exit his residence to speak with police,” the sheriff’s office said. Monahan was later taken into custody and charged with second-degree murder.

“My daughter was an honor student,” Andrew Gillis told reporters on Wednesday. “She had hopes and dreams of becoming a marine biologist or veterinarian. She loved animals. And this man took that away from us.”

“I have the utmost confidence that the justice system will prevail,” he added. “Kaylin deserves justice.”

Monahan made his first appearance in court on Wednesday afternoon. Monahan’s lawyer argued that he isn’t a flight risk, noting that he’s been in the community for over 30 years and owns his own company, but Monahan was ordered remanded without bail.

Monahan’s attorney, Kurt Mausert, told Albany ABC affiliate WTEN that there were “three vehicles, one of them a loud motorcycle, that are described as coming up my client’s long driveway — a 3-mile driveway — at a high rate of speed, shining their lights in his house late at night.”

“[Monahan] had no idea who they were, what they were doing there. It was not a simple drive in, turn around, drive out, that’s being portrayed again by the sheriff,” Monahan said. “So, the facts of this case are going to have to come out through both witness interviews and the analysis of forensic evidence. It is way too soon to be pronouncing guilt and be pronouncing what someone is thinking, and whether they were entitled to feel fear, or whether they weren’t.”

Mausert added, “We have an elderly gentleman and his elderly wife living out in the dark woods in Washington County with three vehicles that come roaring into his driveway at a high rate of speed, shined their lights at his house, and not leaving when he turns on the floodlights, so certainly there was cause for an element of fear on Mr. Monahan’s part.”

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(SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO) — There is a side of Puerto Rico that many Americans may not know about.

The tropical paradise is best known for its colorful buildings, cobblestone-lined streets, lush forests and sun-drenched beaches. But hidden in plain sight are also signs of a booming industry that has overtaken much of the island for decades.

Manufacturing industries were lured to the island in the1960s and 1970s, after a now-expired federal tax incentive known Section 936 exempted businesses from federal income tax on profits earned by U.S. companies in U.S. territories.

The more businesses came ashore, the more it affected the quality of life for residents on the island, some residents told ABC News.

A town called Barceloneta, located on the island’s north shore, is so synonymous with the pharmaceutical industry that there is a sign that says “Pharmaceutical Town” when you enter, “because there are pharmaceutical companies everywhere,” a resident named Joeli told ABC News. Real estate listings for office buildings tout the municipality as the “preferred Pharmaceutical town of Puerto Rico.”

Puerto Rico accounted for 19.3% of the $66 billion in pharmaceuticals the U.S. exported in 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics.

The island acting as one of the country’s top producers of pharmaceuticals has brought numerous economic benefits for the island and its residents, but it has also come at significant cost, advocates told ABC News.

“Puerto Rico, in many cases, has become kind of an engine of manufacturing drugs that can go directly to the U.S.,” Julio Lopez Varona, the co-chief of campaigns at the Center for Popular Democracy, told ABC News.

The influx of business, in continuation with a government development program touted as “Operation Bootstrap” that began in the 1940s, was supposed to create jobs for locals on the island, Ruth Santiago, an attorney based in Salinas, Puerto Rico, and an environmental health advocate with Earth Justice, told ABC News.

“Puerto Rico, since 1898, has been a colony of the United States. And since then, the U.S. has kind of manipulated Puerto Rico’s economy to benefit the needs and the wants of the U.S.,” Varona said.

In addition, the industrial parks created by the government, which involved multiple plant sites placed in the same area, have had a long history of water violations, Santiago said.

In April 2020, Teva Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients was fined more than $500,000 for alleged Clean Water Act and other environmental violations at its pharmaceutical manufacturing plant in Guayama, Puerto Rico. The plant shut operations after TAPI struggled to come into compliance, Jose Rivera, lead environmental engineer of multimedia permits and compliance branch of the Caribbean Environmental Protection Division, told ABC News.

“After TAPI closed, which was around 2017, we found out that there was also pollution to the groundwater coming from this plant,” Santiago said.

When asked for comment, a representative for Teva Pharmaceuticals, TAPI’s parent company, told ABC News, “While Teva did not admit liability, the Company has resolved all of the claims raised at that time.”

And one mile away is the Fiber Public Supply Wells super fund site, created over 20 years ago and for which six different manufacturing companies were found responsible for the pollution from the solvents that they used, according to Santiago. Because it is so difficult to remove pollutants from groundwater, the EPA says the remediation efforts take a very long time but that monitoring indicates that the pollutants are contained.

The environmental effects from manufacturing activity on the island are expected to require treatment and monitoring for decades to come, the experts said.

But several residents told ABC News that the pharmaceutical and manufacturing industries provide much-needed jobs for locals. The environmental detriments of industry are “part of the deal,” Varona said.

“I have very close friends that have been able to kind of build their lives around pharmaceuticals,” Varona said, “It has been an economic kind of opportunity for, for many people.”
 

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(KANSAS CITY, Mo.) — Ralph Yarl, a 16-year-old teen who was shot by a homeowner after he accidentally arrived at the wrong address to pick up his siblings – may be a victim of “adultification,” according to researchers.

Adultification refers to the racial bias in which people perceive Black children as older and less innocent than white children.

Research has shown that people often perceive young Black males as bigger and more physically threatening than young white males of the same size.

Studies also found that Black children are more likely to be seen as adult-like, less in need of protection, and perceived as angry when they’re not.

This can have devastating consequences, leading to discrimination and even violence against Black children, according to researchers. Several researchers referred to the bias as “dehumanizing” for Black people.

“This country, unfortunately, has a history of dehumanizing the Black body, the Black family and taking away those freedoms that should be enjoyed by everybody,” said Alison Cooke, a statistician at the UCLA-Duke University National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, in an interview with ABC News.

Some researchers are speculating how much of a role adultification plays in the perception of Black youth in the aftermath of Yarl’s shooting. They say Black children are not afforded the ability to be a child, make mistakes or be granted the benefit of the doubt.

Yarl was picking up his siblings when he unknowingly arrived at the wrong address, according to officials.

Yarl told police he parked in the driveway, went to the front door, “pressed the doorbell and waited outside the front door,” according to the probable cause statement.

The homeowner, Andrew Lester, an 84-year-old white man, told police he had just laid down in bed when he heard the doorbell ring. Armed with a handgun, Lester told police he approached the front door of his home, which has an interior door and exterior glass door – both of which were locked.

Lester told police he opened the interior door, and saw a Black male “approximately 6 feet tall” pulling on the exterior storm door handle. He stated he believed someone was attempting to break into the house, and “shot twice within a few seconds of opening the door,” the statement read.

Yarl told police “he did not pull on the door.” He told police he was “immediately shot in the head and fell to the ground” and he got up and ran, during which Lester allegedly said “don’t come around here.”

“When I think about what the shooter has said about Ralph, there’s an automatic assumption that he is an intruder,” said T. Elon Dancy, Chief Research Scientist of the Center for Urban Education in the University of Pittsburgh School of Education, in an interview with ABC News.

Dancy says that adultification paints Black children as “someone who was up to no good and is a potential intruder.”

Researchers Cooke and Amy Halberstadt, a psychology professor at North Carolina State University, noted Lester’s reference to Yarl’s size.

Halberstadt’s research found that Black boys are more likely perceived to be larger than white boys, despite no real size differences found between the males in the study.

Lester has been charged with one count of felony assault in the first degree and one felony count of armed criminal action. He is expected to appear in court Wednesday.

The suspect told police “it was the last thing he wanted to do, but he was ‘scared to death’ due to the male’s size,” his own age, and his “inability to defend himself.”

Researchers say these comments bring to mind the findings from a study about Black males being seen as more threatening than same-sized white males.

Yarl’s shooting reminds some of the Trayvon Martin case, which was a catalyst for the early stages of the Black Lives Matter movement

Martin, a 17-year-old Black teen, was fatally shot in 2012 by George Zimmerman, a man who followed Martin during his walk home from the store because, Zimmerman said, he believed Martin was suspicious.

Zimmerman was acquitted on all charges connected to Martin’s death in July 2013 after asserting self defense.

Sybrina Fulton, Martin’s mother, used her platform to remind people that Martin was a child after his death, said Dancy.

Dancy believes Martin’s youth got lost in the trial in which Zimmerman labeled Martin a “punk” and one of “these —holes” in the 911 call he made while following Martin.

Dancy believes those descriptors “are not the ways that we talked about children who are taking a walk to a neighborhood store to get Skittles and something to drink,” which is what Martin was said to have been doing that night.

How adultification impacts Black children

Adultification has a legacy of slavery and represents the perpetuation of racist stereotypes, researchers say.

“We have hundreds and hundreds of years of cultivating racism in our country, and instilling fear among the white population against the Black population,” said Halberstadt in an interview with ABC News.

She continued, “When Blacks were enslaved people, white slave owners had to justify why they had slaves and to justify the chains and harsh consequences – so in that goal, they completely dehumanized people. But they also created a world of fear that we still have today.”

In a University of California, Los Angeles study, it was found that Black children were considered significantly less innocent than children in every age group starting at age 10.

As a result, Black children are 18 times more likely than white children to be criminally sentenced as adults rather than children, according to a study in the Personality and Social Psychology journal.

Black children are also much more likely to be suspended from school and receive harsher punishments for the same infractions than white children, according to research published by the American Psychological Association under the assumptions backed by adultification.

Black youth are also more likely to face police violence if accused of a crime, the UCLA study found.

“Black youth — female and male — are being dehumanized and not afforded the protection that we typically give children in this country,” said Carmen M. Culotta, a research associate at the University of Cincinnati Evaluation Services Center. “It could lead to the perpetration of violence against them because you see black male children and adolescents as a threat.”

The compounding impacts of adultification can impact the community’s education, mental health, safety, overpolicing of Black communities, and more.

Researchers told ABC News that the harmful stereotypes of Black people that perpetuate adultification need to be continuously acknowledged, challenged and dismantled to prevent further instances of Black children being killed for being perceived as a threat.

“In the case of Ralph Yarl, it is proving to us that we still have a long march toward freedom and justice,” said Dancy.

“This isn’t something that should just be a burden of the Black community. It needs to be acknowledged by the white parents,” Cooke said.

She continued, “Everyone who wants to engage in this society should be acknowledging: Where did these biases come from and how can we, in our everyday lives, not act on the bias? How do you take that extra step?”

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(NEW YORK) — A New York City parking garage that partially collapsed on Tuesday will carefully be demolished as investigators search for the cause of the structural collapse that killed one and injured five others, officials said.

More than 50 cars were parked on the roof of the four-story Lower Manhattan building when it collapsed Tuesday afternoon, sending cars plummeting and killing one worker whose body remains trapped in the debris, officials said Wednesday.

Gas tanks and electric vehicles in the debris are complicating the deconstruction process.

“This is an incredibly complex operation,” emergency management commissioner Zach Iscol said during a press briefing Wednesday. “The building is not structurally sound.”

The city is working to “safely demolish” the building while also removing the vehicles, he said.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams confirmed Wednesday that the deceased garage worker, who has not been publicly identified, also remains in the collapsed building.

Four workers were treated at local hospitals following the collapse, while a fifth refused medical treatment, officials said. The New York Fire Department said it appears most if not all of the patients have since been released.

Department of Buildings acting Commissioner Kazimir Vilenchik said the building “pancaked,” and that the ceiling collapsed “all the way to the cellar floor.”

Firefighters went inside the building to search for victims but it was continuing to collapse so they evacuated. A robotic dog and a drone were brought in to continue to search the building. Officials believe that everyone is accounted for and there is no reason to believe this is anything but a structural collapse.

The exact cause of the collapse remains under investigation.

“There’s a thorough investigation that is going to happen with this building. And we’re going to learn from it,” Adams said.

The parking garage, which is owned by 57 Ann Street Realty Association, currently has four active violations, according to records from the New York City Department of Buildings.

The violations that remain open were recorded between 2003 and 2013.

One of the four violations still open is from Nov. 25, 2003, and has a severity status listed as “hazardous.” In the violation details, the department recorded the discovery of cracks in the concrete on the first floor, calling the concrete “defective.”

The company did not immediately respond to a voicemail seeking comment.

ABC News’ Mark Crudele and Victoria Arancio contributed to this report.

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