{"id":27684,"date":"2024-05-10T05:03:30","date_gmt":"2024-05-10T09:03:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=27684"},"modified":"2024-05-10T05:03:30","modified_gmt":"2024-05-10T09:03:30","slug":"us-airman-shot-and-killed-by-police-in-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2024\/05\/10\/us-airman-shot-and-killed-by-police-in-florida\/","title":{"rendered":"US airman shot and killed by police in Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Florida police have publicly released body camera footage from a deputy sheriff who fatally shot a US Air Force member at his home.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Senior Airman Roger Fortson, who was 23 years old, was taken to a hospital where he died, officials said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A lawyer for the victim’s family, citing a witness, alleged the police burst into the wrong home.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Police have disputed the claim and said the deputy reacted in self-defence after he saw Fortson armed with a gun.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The airman was shot on 3 May at his home, located 5 miles (8km) from the Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt Field, Florida, where he is based.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The deputy who shot him – whom police have not named – has since been placed on administrative leave.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Okaloosa County Sheriff Eric Aden said the shooting was being investigated by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the State Attorney’s Office.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr Aden promised to provide “transparency and accountability” but added: “These investigations take time.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“But I want to assure you that we are not hiding, covering up, or taking any action that would result in a rushed judgment of Mr Fortson or our deputy.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The sheriff showed a four-minute video taken from the body camera worn by the deputy who fired the fatal shots.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The clip showed police arriving at Fortson’s apartment complex, and being led to an elevator by a witness who said she had heard fighting coming from an apartment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The deputy then approached the front door alone, knocked, and twice called out that he was a member of the “sheriff’s office”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Fortson was seen holding a gun in his right hand as he opened the door. The deputy then fired multiple shots as soon as the door opened, telling him afterwards to drop the weapon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“It’s over there. I don’t have it,” Fortson said as he lay on the floor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A lawyer for the Fortson family, Ben Crump, said in a news conference on Thursday that Fortson “was the best America had to offer”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“He was a patriot. He was a US airman, special ops. He was fighting for our way of life. He was fighting for everybody,” Mr Crump said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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His mother, Chantimekki Fortson, broke down crying as Mr Crump recounted the moments before the airman was shot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“My baby was my everything,” she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr Crump said at the time of the shooting Fortson was on a video call with a friend, who described what she heard to his family’s legal team.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The friend said the airman heard a knock on his apartment door and asked who was there, but received no response. He then heard a second, “very aggressive knock” but did not see anyone when he looked through the peephole.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It is at this point that Fortson is said to have grown concerned and retrieved his gun, which the lawyer said was legally owned.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As Fortson returned to his living room, the witness said police burst through the door, saw that the resident was armed and shot him six times.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr Crump said the witness believed the officers were in the wrong apartment, as Fortson was alone at the time with no disturbance at his residence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The sheriff on Thursday denied that officers had gone to the wrong address.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In an earlier statement, the sheriff’s office said the deputy “reacted in self defence after he encountered a 23-year-old man armed with a gun and after the deputy had identified himself as law enforcement.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Speaking to reporters, Mr Crump accused police of trying to “justify unjustifiable excessive use of force”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Fortson was assigned to the 4th Special Operations Squadron, according to the US Air Force, and entered active duty in November 2019.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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According to Mr Crump, he enlisted in the military after graduating from high school in Atlanta, Georgia with honours.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr Crump, a civil rights lawyer based in Florida, has worked on multiple high-profile cases of police-involved deaths of black Americans, including George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin, Tyre Nichols and Breonna Taylor.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Florida police have publicly released body camera footage from a deputy sheriff who fatally shot a US Air Force member at his home. Senior Airman Roger Fortson, who was 23 years old, was taken to […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27685,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[109,2,3],"tags":[417,9561,10343,7221],"class_list":{"0":"post-27684","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headline","8":"category-news","9":"category-usa","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-florida-department-of-law-enforcement","12":"tag-okaloosa-county","13":"tag-us-police-killings","14":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27684"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27687,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27684\/revisions\/27687"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}