An attorney says the Florida officers who fatally shot a black American airman entered the wrong apartment

MIAMI (AP) – Deputies responding to a call about a disturbance at a Florida apartment complex burst into the wrong apartment and fatally shot a Black U.S. Air Force airman who was home alone once they saw him armed with a gun, a lawyer for the man’s family said Wednesday.

Senior Airman Roger Fortson, 23, who worked in the Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt Field, was in his off-base apartment at Fort Walton Beach when the May 3 shooting occurred.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump said in a statement that Fortson spoke on Facetime with the woman during the meeting.

According to Crump, the woman, whom Crump didn’t discover, said Fortson was alone in his apartment when he heard a knock on the door. He asked who was there, but received no answer. Just a few minutes later, Fortson heard a louder knock, but when he looked through the peephole, he saw nobody, Crump said, citing the woman’s account.

The woman stated that Fortson was concerned and went to retrieve the gun, which Crump said was her legal property.

Crump’s testimony states that as Fortson was returning to his lounge, deputies burst through the door and saw that Fortson was armed and shot him six times. The woman said Fortson was on the ground saying, “I can’t breathe” after he was shot, Crump said.

Authorities said Fortson died at the hospital. The deputy involved in the shooting has been placed on administrative leave pending the consequence of the investigation.

The woman stated that Fortson didn’t interfere with the Facetime call and believes deputies should have confused the apartment, Crump’s statement said.

“The circumstances of Roger’s death raise serious questions that require an immediate response from authorities, especially given disturbing witness testimony that police entered the wrong apartment,” Crump said.

“We call for transparency in the investigation into Roger’s death and the immediate release of body camera footage to the family,” Crump said. “His family and the public deserve to know what happened in the moments leading up to this tragedy.”

Crump is a nationally known attorney based in Tallahassee, Florida. He has been involved in quite a few high-profile cases involving law enforcement shootings of Black people, including those of Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, Tire Nichols and George Floyd.

Crump and Fortson’s family plans to talk at a news conference in Fort Walton Beach on Thursday morning.

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The Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office didn’t immediately reply to an email and voicemail from The Associated Press in search of comment on Crump’s claims. But on Wednesday afternoon, Sheriff Eric Aden posted a statement on Facebook expressing sadness over the shooting.

“At this time, we humbly ask our community for patience as we work to understand the facts that led to this tragic event,” Aden said.

The sheriff’s office said in a statement last week that a sheriff’s deputy responding to a disturbance call at an apartment complex responded in self-defense after encountering an armed man. The office didn’t provide details about what disturbances deputies were responding to or who called them.

The sheriff’s office also declined to right away discover the responding deputies or their race. Authorities said earlier this week that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the local state’s attorney’s office would investigate the case.

FDLE spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the agency was highly unlikely to offer any further comments until the investigation was accomplished.

Fortson was assigned to the 4th Special Operations Squadron as a special mission airman, where considered one of his roles as a crew member of the squadron’s AC-130J Ghostrider aircraft was to load the gunship’s 30mm and 105mm guns during a mission.

Fortson’s death bears striking similarities to the deaths of other Black people killed lately by police of their homes, in circumstances through which officers responded to the wrong address or responded to a service call with reckless use of deadly force.

In 2018, a white former Dallas police officer proposed fatally shooting Botham Jean, an unarmed black man, after mistaking his apartment for her own. Former officer Amber Guyger was found guilty of murder the following 12 months and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

In 2019, a white former Fort Worth, Texas, officer fatally shot Atatiana Jefferson through the rear window of her home after responding to a non-emergency call reporting that Jefferson’s front door was open. Aaron Dean, a former officer, was found guilty of manslaughter in 2022 and sentenced to almost 12 years in prison.

Crump represented the families in each cases as a part of his ongoing efforts to force accountability for police killings of black people.

“What I’m trying to do as much as I can, even sometimes on my own, is to increase the value of Black lives,” Crump told The Associated Press in 2021 after a former Minneapolis officer was convicted of George Floyd’s murder.

Fort Walton Beach is positioned between Panama City Beach and Pensacola in the Florida Panhandle.