‘Drop the gun!’ Bodycam tells tale of tragedy
A Florida sheriff has released body camera video showing a deputy outside an apartment door and firing immediately when it was opened by a black man carrying a handgun pointed down, a killing the family denounced as “unjustifiable”.
Okaloosa County Sheriff Eric Aden presented the video hours after the family of US Air Force Senior Airman Roger Fortson and their attorneys held a news conference in which they disputed that the deputy acted in selfdefence. Aden rejected assertions made by civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing Fortson’s family, that the deputy had gone to the wrong apartment, covered the door’s peephole and did not announce himself.
The video shows the deputy arriving at a Fort Walton Beach apartment building on May 3 and speaking to a woman outside who described someone hearing an argument.
The video shows the deputy banging on the door and stepping aside, seemingly out of view of the door. Twice he shouted: “Sheriff ’s office! Open the door!” Fortson opened the door and could be seen holding what appeared to be handgun pointed at the floor. The deputy shouted, “Step back!” and fired shots. “Drop the gun! Drop the gun!”
“It’s over there,” Fortson said. “Drop the gun!” the deputy said. “I don’t have it,” Fortson said, lying on the ground. The deputy then called paramedics on his radio.
The sheriff ’s office would not identify the responding deputy or his race. He was placed on leave pending an investigation.
Crump later said the officer did not tell Fortson to drop his gun before shooting “multiple times within a split second of the door being opened . . . We remain adamant that the police had the wrong apartment as Roger was on the phone with his girlfriend for a substantial amount of time leading up to the shooting, and no one else was in the apartment.”
Crump earlier said Fortson was talking to his girlfriend on FaceTime and grabbed his gun because he heard someone outside. Crump said according to the girlfriend, who has not been identified, the deputy burst into the apartment.
In a clip from the FaceTime video captured by Fortson’s cellphone, the airman can be heard groaning and saying, “I can’t breathe.” A deputy can be heard yelling at him, “Stop moving!” The phone is pointed at the ceiling and does not show what is happening.
Aden said he had met with the family yesterday and extended his deepest condolences.
Officials have said the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating. A spokeswoman said it is unlikely the agency will have any further comment until the investigation is complete.
The sheriff said the probe was being handled as a criminal investigation and that no determination had yet been made on whether the deputy’s actions were justified or not. However, the initial news release from the sheriff ’s office that described the shooting said the deputy “reacted in self-defence after he encountered a 23-year-old man armed with a gun.”
Crump said Fortson, originally from Atlanta, was shot six times.
Fortson enlisted in the Air Force after graduating high school, Crump said. He was based at the Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt Field. As a special missions aviator, one of his roles was to load the gunship’s cannons during missions.
Crump, based in Tallahassee, Florida, has been involved in multiple high-profile cases of black people in fatal encounters with law enforcement and vigilantes, including those of Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin, Tyre Nichols, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, who was also killed in her home during a no-knock police raid that targeted her ex-boyfriend in 2020.
Fortson’s death draws striking similarities to other black people killed in recent years in their homes by US police.