Black airman shot to death by Florida deputies who blitzed wrong apartment: attorneys

A Black U.S. Air Force airman was on the phone with his girlfriend one afternoon when he heard someone pounding on the door of his apartment in the Florida Panhandle.

After looking through the peephole and noticing that it was covered, he grabbed his gun — and sheriff’s deputies stormed inside. His girlfriend, attorneys say, listened in as he was shot six times.

Senior Airman Roger Fortson was shot and killed May 3 in his Fort Walton Beach apartment by deputies with the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Department. Fort Walton Beach is located between Pensacola and Panama City.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who’s on the team representing Fortson’s family, said deputies were responding to a disturbance call when they entered the wrong unit. Crump, based in Tallahassee, has been involved in several high-profile cases in which Black people were killed at the hands of law enforcement — including Trayvon Martin, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

“Everyone should be troubled by this,” Crump said during a news conference Thursday. “Any law-abiding citizen who feels they have a right to the Fourth Amendment and Second Amendment should be very troubled by this matter.”

Holding a frame with a photo of her 23-year-old son, Meka Fortson broke down as Crump demanded answers. The attorney urged the sheriff’s office to “do the right thing” and respect Fortson’s name and legacy.

“They took my son,” she said, her voice muffled as she sobbed.

Meka Fortson recounted the day she found out that something happened to her son. She said she rushed to the hospital to see him, and when she entered his hospital room, three men in Air Force uniforms and a black folder with a pen.

“That’s when I knew,” she said.

Attorneys know what happened during — and leading up — to the shooting, because Fortson’s girlfriend witnessed it from a FaceTime call, Crump said. They’re now in the process of obtaining body camera footage.

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