SANTIAGO – The young Mapuche Indian who was killed by police this week in the southern Chilean region of La Araucania was shot in the back, medical examiners determined.

The police investigations agency, or CDI, also said Thursday it found no sign that Indians occupying a property in that region fired buckshot at Carabineros (militarized police) who were executing a court order to evict them, according to the daily El Austral de la Araucania.

Both the findings in the autopsy and the police probe contradict the version – initially backed by the government – offered Wednesday by the Carabineros militarized police force, which said the officer who fired the fatal shot was acting in self-defense after at least 80 rounds of buckshot were fired in his direction.

Fabian Mendoza Collio, 24, was fatally shot by police Wednesday during an operation to evict a group of Mapuches occupying the San Sebastian estate outside Angol, a town in La Araucania that is about 600 kilometers (373 miles) south of Santiago.

The sergeant who fired the fatal shots is in custody and facing possible charges.

After learning the results of the autopsy, which also revealed that the gunshot killed the young man instantly, his family members removed his body from the morgue in Angol and carried it away in a Mapuche flag-draped coffin.

During the procession, several demonstrators shattered the windows of a local office of the Interior Ministry. Mendoza’s relatives, meanwhile, transported the coffin to the town of Requen Pillan, where a wake will be held for four days.

Shortly after Mendoza was killed, eight Indians and three police officers were injured in a clash and unknown assailants set fire to a storehouse on another estate and caused 500 million pesos (some $926,000) in damage.

Around 10 Mapuche protesters also occupied the cathedral in Valdivia, some 835 kilometers (520 miles) south of Santiago, and about 100 students briefly blocked the main access road leading to Isla Teja, an island in Valdivia.

In Santiago, President Michelle Bachelet on Thursday lamented the death of the Mapuche Indian and called for dialogue to resolve ongoing land disputes in that region.

“Nothing justifies violence in La Araucania,” she said during a public event in which she characterized Mendoza’s death as “very regrettable” and sent her condolences to his family.

“It must be understood that the only way to resolve the legitimate historical demands of the Mapuche people is through dialogue,” the president said.

Meanwhile, Manuel Camilo Vial, the bishop of Temuco, La Araucania’s capital, said Thursday that a “serious” situation has been created due to “mistakes that have been made.”

He added that increasing the police presence in the region will not help solve the conflict but rather will only add “more fuel to the fire.”

Southern Chile has been the scene of long-running land disputes between Mapuche communities and farmers and lumber firms, with the conflicts often turning violent.

The Mapuches, Chile’s largest indigenous group with slightly more than 600,000 members, demand the constitutional recognition of their tribal identity, rights and culture, as well as ownership of the lands that belonged to their ancestors.

The government has mapped out a plan to purchase land and subsequently deliver it to communal landholders, but the process has gotten bogged down and more radical indigenous protesters have resorted to violence as a pressure tactic.

Authorities have prosecuted violent Indian protesters under the country’s dictatorship-era Anti-Terrorism Law, which expands police and judiciary powers, while the Chilean right claims – though thus far without concrete evidence – that foreign terrorist groups are behind the most violent Mapuche protests. EFE