An active duty U.S. airman was shot and killed during a deputy-involved shooting on Friday, May 3.
Roger Fortson, 23, was shot and killed by an Okaloosa County sheriff’s deputy while, according to the department, the deputy was responding to “a disturbance in progress.”
The Fortson family retained civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who accused the department of covering up misconduct following the shooting.
“The circumstances surrounding Roger’s death raise serious questions that demand immediate answers from authorities, particularly given a witness’s alarming statement that police went to the wrong apartment,” the statement said. Crump in a statement Wednesday.
Here’s what we know.
Family and police argue over events leading up to shooting
Sheriff Eric Aden held a news conference Thursday in which he disputed aspects of the Fortson family’s allegations and provided police body camera footage showing the deputy involved in the shooting had arrived at the correct door by responding to the disturbance call.
Video released Thursday indicates a woman at the apartment complex gave the deputy a specific room number and he clearly knocked on a door and identified himself as a deputy.
Although no sounds from the apartment indicated that a violent argument of the type described by the woman in the video occurred when the deputy arrived, Aden said, “Mr. Fortson states that he recognized that law enforcement was at his door, and that he arrived at the door with a gun in his hand. »
The video indicates the officer stood to the side of the door, out of view of the peephole, and began shooting immediately after the door opened.
Crump also held a press conference Thursday to present what he says is the true story of Fortson’s death; gunned down in his own apartment by a cop who burst in while he was chatting on Facetime with his girlfriend.
An attorney for Crump’s office said the law firm located “an unofficial redacted 911 call” that led them to believe a disturbance had been reported at the rental office at the Elan apartment “of the part of what we think is a fourth part.
She said attorneys representing the Fortson family believe the disturbance call was the one that brought deputies to the scene of the fatal shooting, but they continue to search for answers.
After having the opportunity to view the body camera footage on Thursday, Fortson’s family released a statement saying:
“In the four and a half minute, heavily redacted video, it is very disturbing that the deputy gave no verbal commands and fired multiple times in the split second after the door opened, killing Roger . Despite the redactions, the video provided some answers, but it also raises even more troubling questions: Because the officer did not tell Roger to drop the gun before shooting, was the officer trained to give verbal warnings? Did the police officer attempt to take life-saving measures? Has the officer been trained to deal with law-abiding citizens and registered gun owners? »
His girlfriend witnessed a shooting on Facetime
Crump said his girlfriend, who has hired a lawyer and is staying out of the public eye for now, told him “she heard everything” that happened in Fortson’s apartment l the afternoon of the shooting.
She said Fortson was startled by aggressive banging on the apartment door, but when he looked through the peephole he didn’t see anyone on the other side, so he went for his gun legally registered.
“She just heard gunshots and he was on the ground, they just said ‘he shot,'” Meka Fortson, Roger’s mother, said during Crump’s news conference. “My baby was shot.”
Who was Roger Fortson?
Meka Fortson called Roger the backbone of her family and said he enlisted in the military after graduating from high school to fulfill his dream of buying her a house.
“He was living his dream, he was going to make life better for his mother and his family,” she said.
He was also well respected by his military superiors and colleagues, she added. Roger was assigned to the 4th Special Operations Squadron and entered active duty on November 19, 2019.
“Everyone told us what a respectable young man he was,” Meka Fortson said, adding that he would have had too much respect for law enforcement to confront them.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Bodycam footage of Roger Fortson shooting in Florida raises questions
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