Senior Airman Roger Fortson of the U.S. Air Force was fatally shot by a Florida deputy after they burst into the wrong apartment, according to civil rights attorney Ben Crump.
Deputies responding to a disturbance call at a Florida apartment complex burst into the wrong unit and fatally shot a Black U.S. Air Force airman who was home alone when they saw he was armed with a gun, an attorney for the man’s family said Wednesday. Senior Airman Roger Fortson, 23, who was based at the Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt Field, was in his off-base apartment in Fort Walton Beach when the shooting happened on May 3.
spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger told The Associated Press on Wednesday that it is highly unlikely the agency will have any further comment until the investigation is complete. Fortson was assigned to the 4th Special Operations Squadron as a special missions aviator, where one of his roles as a member of the squadron's AC-130J Ghostrider aircrew was to load the gunship's 30mm and 105mm cannons during missions.
Crump has represented families in both cases as part of his ongoing effort to force accountability for the killings of Black people at the hands of police. 'What I’m trying to do, as much as I can, even sometimes singlehandedly, is increase the value of Black life,' Crump told The Associated Press in 2021 following the conviction a former Minneapolis officer in the murder of George Floyd. Fort Walton Beach is between Panama City Beach and Pensacola in the Florida Panhandle.
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