The shooting death of United States Senior Airman Roger Fortson by a Florida deputy last year created a cascade of events that led to the shooting death of his brother Andre less than three months later, their mother said in an exclusive interview with Atlanta Black Star this week.
Meanwhile, Eddie Lee Duran Jr., the former Okalooska County sheriff’s deputy who killed Fortson within seconds of the 23-year-old Black man opening his front door, is free on bail, awaiting trial on charges of manslaughter.
But even if he gets convicted and sentenced, it still would not repair the heartbreak suffered by their mother.
“Everything Eddie Duran did started a domino effect in my life,” Chantemekki Fortson said.
“He’s always going to be the person that took two of my children, because if he had not killed Roger, Andre would have been in Fort Walton on the beach with his big brother, where he was planning on spending the summer,” Fortson said.
Instead, Andre Fortson was killed in Atlanta on July 30, 2024, in a breezeway of the apartment building where he lived with his mother and sister; an innocent bystander killed by a man shooting at another man over a dispute that had nothing to do with Andre.
“So even though he never actually pulled the trigger for Andre, he placed Andre in a bad situation,” Chantemekki Fortston said.
Duran’s trial is not scheduled yet but he has a pretrial hearing scheduled for August 11, according to online court records from Okaloosa County.
The Shooting
Roger Fortson was killed on May 3, 2024, inside his apartment after Duran banged on his door in response to a complaint about possible domestic violence.
But Duran had knocked on the wrong door after receiving wrong information from a woman who works at the apartment complex, who herself was only passing along information she received from a resident.
The senior airman, who lived alone, was having a FaceTime conversation with a female friend when he opened the door, holding a legally owned firearm pointed downwards by his side.
Duran fired several times, later claiming he was acting in self-defense because he was in fear for his life, claiming he saw aggression in Fortson’s eyes.
“When I saw his eyes, I saw aggression,” Duran said, according to the sheriff’s report.
“It was a stare that was fixated 100 percent on me, not eyebrows raised, not, ‘Hey what’s going on? Why are you here?’ It was a stare … that showed me there was aggression.”
But body camera video shows Fortson never threatened him with the gun and was never given an opportunity to put the gun down, leading to the deputy’s termination and arrest on manslaughter charges on August 23, 2024.
“I can’t breathe,” moaned Roger Fortson as he lay inside his apartment dying seconds after being shot.
“Do not move! Stop moving!” ordered Duran, refusing to provide first aid.
Chantemekki Fortson, who watched the full FaceTime video, said her son was coughing and begging for help for ten minutes as the deputy walked through his apartment.
“Then another officer came and said, ‘he’s military,’ and then the deputy (Duran) said, ‘Oh, f_ck.’”
“And then he started saying, ‘stay with me, buddy’ because everything in Fort Walton is special operations. So he knew he didn’t just kill a regular person but a regular military person,” Fortson said.
Watch the video below which contains both body camera and a portion of the FaceTime video.
False Claim of “Self-Defense”
The Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office wasted no time in defending Duran to the media, releasing a statement the following day that said Duran was responding to a call of a “disturbance in progress.”
“Hearing sounds of a disturbance, [the deputy] reacted in self-defense after he encountered a 23-year-old man armed with a gun and after the deputy had identified himself as law enforcement,” the statement said.
Perhaps they issued that statement before viewing the body camera footage, because the video shows there were no sounds of a disturbance coming from inside Roger Fortson’s apartment when the deputy knocked.
And even though Duran did say, “sheriff’s office, open the door” twice before Roger Fortson opened the door, he stood off to the side of the door as they are trained to do, making it impossible for the senior airman to confirm his identity through the peephole.
And we will never know if Fortson actually heard those words before opening the door, considering he may have been in his bedroom toward the back of the apartment behind a closed door.
And even if he did hear those words, can we blame him for exercising caution in case it was somebody with bad intentions impersonating a law enforcement officer? Especially in a gun-friendly state like Florida where roughly one-third of residents own guns.
Or does the Florida stand-your-ground law apply only to white people?
“If he had been a white guy, he would still be alive,” she said, pointing out previous examples of cops across the country arresting white men with guns without having to kill them.
The Lawsuit
The pending lawsuit was filed in federal court by nationally renowned attorney Ben Crump on May 6, listing Duran as a defendant along with Okaloosa County Sheriff Eric Aden, Chez Elan LLC, the company that owns the apartment complex where the shooting took place, and a Jane Doe, who is the woman who called 911 to report the alleged domestic violence situation.
The video shows the woman, who remains unidentified but is described as a leasing agent for the apartment complex, telling the deputy the domestic violence incident was taking place in apartment 1401, where Roger Fortson lived alone.
She also told Duran that two weeks earlier she heard people arguing and the sound of somebody slapping somebody else, but she also said she did not call 911 that day because she was not sure which apartment it was coming from.
But on the day of the shooting, she told Duran that she was convinced it was coming from 1401, basing her allegations from what another resident had told her.
“It happens frequently but this time it sounded as if it was getting out of hand,” she told Duran.
But there was nothing but silence when Duran walked up to 1401, standing in front of the unit before banging on the door.
According to the lawsuit:
Deputy Duran knocked on Mr. Fortson’s door but did not initially announce his identity as law enforcement. Deputy Duran then positioned himself out of view of the peephole and knocked again more aggressively.
From inside, Mr. Fortson, who was still on FaceTime with his girlfriend, could not see anyone through the peephole and heard no identification.
Concerned for his safety, Mr. Fortson told his girlfriend he was going to retrieve his firearm because he did not know who was at his door.
Mr. Fortson then opened the door with the firearm pointed downward, away from the doorway.
Within less than two seconds of the door opening, Deputy Duran shot Mr. Fortson six times.
At no time did Mr. Fortson raise or point the firearm in his right hand at Deputy Duran. His left hand was raised in a non-threatening posture, universally known as surrender. Body camera footage confirmed that the firearm remained at his side and pointed down.
After being shot, Mr. Fortson stated, “It’s over there. I don’t have it,” referring to the firearm, which had fallen to the ground.
More than a year later, there is no indication whether the sheriff’s office ever investigated the real culprit behind the alleged domestic violence incident.
Stellar Reputation
From a very young age, Roger Fortson showed signs of above-average intelligence, prompting his teachers to place him in advance classes from elementary school through high school.
He also dreamed of being an airline pilot as a child which is why he entered the United States Air Force after graduating high school in Georgia.
During his five years in the Air Force, he traveled the world and earned a stellar reputation among his peers, including foreign soldiers whom he worked with who reached out to his mother to offer condolences after his death.
In fact, several of his Air Force peers wrote letters of impact to the court describing themselves as his “military family,” asking the judge to keep the trial in Okaloosa County which is home to Elgin Air Force Base.
He was also an old soul who loved to dance, appreciating Motown music like the Temptations that had been popular in the 1960s and early 1970s even though he was born in 2001.
“I have so many good memories of him and you would think the memories would make it easier but they make it harder,” said Chantemekki Fortson through tears.
One of her fondest memories is how he would help her deliver newspapers for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the age of 11, waking up before dawn seven days a week for two years to help her roll the newspaper to deliver them to subscribers.
“We would leave the house at 1:30 a.m. and be done throwing the route around 4 a.m.,” she said. “I would let him do the buildings while I did the residential areas.”
“He would go to sleep in the car when we were done, then come home and sleep for another hour-and-a-half, then get up and go to school. He would do his homework at school because he was smart like that.”
After entering the Air Force, he was stationed in Fort Walton Beach, which is about a five-hour drive from Atlanta, and his mother and siblings would visit on weekends.
“Fort Walton used to be my happy place but now it’s my nightmare,” she said.
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