SARATOGA SPRINGS, Utah — Independent autopsy findings suggest that a 22-year-old black man was running from the police in Utah when he was shot six times and killed last Wednesday, and not lunging at officers with a samurai sword, as official police reports said, a lawyer for the man’s family said Monday.

The man, Darrien Nathaniel Hunt, whose mother is white and father is black, was shot and killed outside a convenience store in Saratoga Springs, 35 miles south of Salt Lake City. His family contends that a sword he was carrying was a toylike decorative object with a rounded tip that posed no real threat. They have also said they believe the shooting was racially motivated.

But law enforcement officials said Monday that the samurai sword was both real and dangerous, with a two-and-a-half-foot steel blade, and that Mr. Hunt’s race played no role in the officers’ actions. The authorities said Mr. Hunt was shot after he lunged at two police officers who had responded to a 911 caller’s report of a man brandishing a sword in front of a credit union.

Neither the Saratoga Springs police nor the Utah County attorney’s office, which is investigating, have disclosed details of Mr. Hunt’s verbal interaction with the police, or said how many shots officers fired.