Video shows Florida deputy opened fire on Black airman seconds after door opened

A decorated U.S. Air Force combat veteran was shot to death by an Okaloosa sheriff’s deputy inside his Fort Walton Beach apartment just seconds after opening the door with a gun in his hand pointed at the floor, according to a police bodycam video released on Thursday.

That footage and a FaceTime video that also recorded a portion of what happened raise questions about whether the shooting was justified, as police claim — or whether the sheriff’s deputy erred in entering the wrong apartment, catching the airman off guard, as his family’s attorneys say.

Senior Airman Roger Fortson, 23, was shot six times and died at a local hospital, authorities said. Okaloosa County Sheriff Eric Aden did not identify the deputy -- who appeared to be white. He was placed on administrative leave, pending a criminal investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

The sheriff released the video on Thursday, six days after the shooting — and just hours after the airman’s family and their attorneys held a news conference disputing the sheriff’s initial report that the shooting was in self defense.

Benjamin Crump, a civil rights lawyer who has handled similar police-involved shootings, accused the sheriff of putting out a “false narrative” that cast Fortson as the bad guy, even though he had a legal firearm and was confronted in his own home.

“A lot of people have guns — it’s Florida. The Second Amendment applies to Roger, too. The police should know that,” Crump said, adding that Fortson was a trained military officer.

Okaloosa County, in Florida’s Panhandle, is home to the largest air force base in the country, Eglin Air Force Base — and Hurlburt Field, the headquarters of the Air Force’s Special Operations Command. Thousands of current and former airmen and women live in the area. Fortson, a native of Atlanta, enlisted after graduating from high school in 2019 and was based at Hurlburt in the Special Operations Wing. He was a missions aviator who was injured while serving in Kuwait, according to his family. His sister is a U.S. Marine.

What the video shows

Aden insisted that deputies did not go to the wrong apartment, and that the video would corroborate that.

The footage is blurred in several places, and the audio is also redacted at certain points. It does show the deputy getting off on the fourth floor, for example, but a sign on the wall outside the elevator indicating what direction to turn is blurred out on the video.

The deputy was responding to a complaint about a loud and possibly physical argument between a couple in one of the complex’s buildings. It’s not clear who reported the disturbance. A woman, whose face is blurred in the video, tells the deputy that two weeks earlier she had heard screaming between a man and a woman inside the building, but she didn’t call police because she didn’t know where the noise was coming from. This time, she says someone called her about a fight in the same building, describing it as “getting out of hand.”

The deputy asks her twice where the apartment is located. At first she says “I’m not sure,” then she tells him it is apartment 1401, on the fourth floor.

The deputy asks the woman to direct other deputies to where he is headed, and he proceeds up the elevator to the fourth floor. The number “4” is shown on the right as he exits the elevator.

He walks down a hall to 1401 and he pounds on the door — initially without identifying himself. He steps to the side, out of view of the door’s peephole, and waits. The hallway is quiet except for the sound of birds chirping.

A voice is inaudible from inside the apartment. Moments later, the deputy pounds aggressively on the door twice, announcing “Sheriff’s Office! Open the Door!” each time.

The door opens, and there is a half second before Fortson comes into view, standing there in jeans and black t-shirt. His face is blurred. His right hand is holding a gun pointed directly at the floor, his other hand is open in front of his chest in a stop motion.

The deputy shouts “step back!” and in a split second, opens fire. Fortson falls to the floor.

“Drop the gun, drop the gun,” the deputy yells as Fortson writhes on the floor.

“It’s over there, I don’t have it,” Fortson responds.

That’s where the police video ends.

A second perspective

“There is no question that the officer acted with impulse and a lack of proper training when he shot and killed Roger within seconds of the door opening,” Crump said after viewing the video. “When he opened his door and saw the sheriff’s deputy, Roger had his gun pointed to the ground with one hand and held his other hand up to signal he was not going to shoot. Only after Roger’s body was riddled with bullets did the officer instruct Roger to drop his gun.”

Fortson had been speaking on FaceTime with his girlfriend throughout the entire incident. Crump said his girlfriend believed that the deputy had barged into the apartment. Crump later released a portion of the FaceTime recording that captured Fortson moaning on the floor after being shot.

“Stop moving!” the deputy shouts. The sounds of other deputies are heard in the background.

“I can’t breathe,” Fortson says, as paramedics begin treating him for transport to the hospital, noting that he has six wounds.

Authorities did not say what time the events occurred, but the police bodycam shows a time of 16:30 — or 4:30 p.m. Crump said Fortson had only been home for about 30 minutes prior to the shooting. He had been playing video games and talking to his girlfriend on his phone at the time police showed up. There was no disturbance, and no one but Fortson in the apartment, Crump said.

Fortson’s death is the latest in a litany of police-involved shootings of Black men and women in their homes that have often sparked protests.

In November, the Okaloosa Sheriff’s Department came under criticism for its lack of training after a deputy mistook the sound of an acorn hitting his patrol vehicle for a gunshot. He immediately fired several rounds into the vehicle, narrowly missing a handcuffed Black man who was sitting in the back seat. The deputy fell to the ground saying “shots fired,” prompting another officer to fire into the vehicle. The bodycam video later showed the acorn hitting the patrol vehicle before the deputy fired. He later resigned.

At the press conference, Fortson’s mother, surrounded by her family, held a large framed photograph of her son in uniform. She wept as she described her son’s determination to support his family and to defend his country.

Fortson received the Air Force Achievement Medal and an Air Medal with a ‘C’ Device, indicating service or achievement performed under combat conditions. He was deployed to Southwest Asia in mid-2023, where he earned the Air Medal, according to the Air Force.

In a statement, First Special Operations Wing Commander Col. Patrick Dierig called Fortson a “proven combat veteran and an incredible teammate. His loss is felt throughout the 4th Special Operations Squadron, the 73d Special Operations Squadron and the entirety of our wing.”

In a statement, Common Defense, a grassroots veterans organization, called for the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate.

“We must finally address the plague of police violence, overreach, and impunity that has infested American policing — a plague that continues to kill our citizens because police choose to shoot first and ask questions second, murdering or maiming civilians in their wake,” said Britni Cuington, Air Force Veteran and Co-Chair of Common Defense’s Black Veterans Caucus.