Memorial service for U.S. Airman killed by deputy underway at New Birth

WSBTV.com News Staff
·2 min read
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A U.S. Airman shot and killed by a Florida deputy at his apartment is being laid to rest Friday in metro Atlanta.

Air Force Senior Airman Roger Fortson, 23, was shot to death by an Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Deputy in his off-base apartment in Fort Walton Beach.

Fortson grew up in DeKalb County and graduated from McNair High School. New Birth Missionary Baptist Church will hold his memorial service at 11 a.m. on Friday.

The special tributes that his family and friends have planned, on Channel 2 Action News at 4:00 p.m.

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Fortson died on May 3. His family’s attorney says that Fortson was on FaceTime with his girlfriend when he heard an aggressive knock on the door and retrieved his legally owned gun. When he opened the door, the deputy shot him several times.

Fortson’s girlfriend told Channel 2′s Candace McCowan on Wednesday that she is still shaken, but she wants the world to know what Fortson’s final moments were before the shooting.

“We heard a knock, and he said, ‘Who is it?’ He said, “Nobody comes up to my house, I don’t know who that could be,’” she said.

“Then the knock gets aggressive, and he says, ‘I’m going to grab my gun because I don’t know who that is. He asked who it was louder,” she said. “What I thought was... It was gunshots. That’s when I heard the officer then identify himself and says, ‘Put the gun down. And Roger says, ‘OK, OK.’”

She said she then heard what she believes were his last conscious moments.

“Roger says, ‘I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.’ He calls out three gunshots to the chest and three to the forearm,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do. There was nothing I could do.”

She said she is still hanging on to a final moment with him on her doorbell camera just days before when Fortson left her home in Atlanta. He told her he loved her, and she repeated it back to him.

“We talked every day. We went from seeing each other once a month to pretty much every weekend,” she said.

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