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.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump said in a statement that Fortson was on a Facetime call with a woman at the time of the encounter.

  • BolexForSoup
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    5 months ago

    You will never, ever catch someone on the far right acknowledging this issue.

    I had the police enter my home once unannounced about 10 or 11 years ago. They just started shining flashlight and walking into my apartment and announced themselves when they were already through the threshold. 2am, I’m bleary eyed with my partner there. I started screaming at them and luckily nothing happened (luckily = I’m a white dude and there was a whiten woman scared next to me).

    But all I can think about is if I had drawn a gun because people were intruding in my home…well, I’d be dead probably.

    For context I live in such a gun nut state that our state motto is “sportsman’s paradise” (hunting) and we just ended permits for concealed carry. Yup, you read that right. Folks can just walk around with concealed guns here now like it’s 1844.