Deputy who immediately shot and killed US airman answering apartment door with gun pointed at ground now faces serious criminal case

Eddie Duran, Roger Fortson

Left: Former deputy Eddie Duran (Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office). Center: U.S. Airman Roger Fortson pictured just before he was fatally shot (Ben Crump). Right: Fortson in uniform (U.S. Air Force).

The Florida deputy who was fired after an internal affairs probe about the fatal shooting 23-year-old Roger Fortson, which unfolded just moments after the U.S. senior airman opened his apartment door on May 3, now faces a manslaughter case.

Prosecutors in the First Judicial Circuit State Attorney’s Office revealed Friday that former Okaloosa County deputy Eddie Lee Duran, 38, was charged with manslaughter with a firearm in Fortson’s death, a count that could put the defendant behind bars for up to 30 years if convicted.

On the day of the shooting, Fortson was at home in his apartment in Fort Walton Beach when Duran knocked on his front door in response to a disturbance call. After the shooting, Fortson family civil rights attorney Ben Crump said that Duran went to the wrong apartment, saying that Fortson was alone at the time and talking to his girlfriend on FaceTime. Okaloosa County Sheriff Eric Aden responded by saying that the then deputy “knocked on the correct door.”

Bodycam of the incident showed that Duran was told by a witness to go to apartment 1401 and that this was the number on the wall outside Fortson’s door.

"1401" visible on the wall outside of Roger Fortson

1401 visible on the wall outside of Roger Fortson’s apartment.

Duran arrived at the apartment complex that day and met a woman in a parking lot who said that it “sounded like something was getting out of hand” in apartment 1401. The woman said that two weeks earlier she was walking by and heard someone yelling “shut the f— up,” among other things, like the “B-word,” but she wasn’t sure where the shouting came from exactly.

At the elevator, the woman told the deputy that she now knew the apartment to be 1401. She told the deputy to take the elevator to the fourth floor. Once off the elevator, the deputy approached Fortson’s apartment. He stood at the door listening for roughly 15 to 18 seconds before knocking on the door. He did not announce himself as law enforcement at this time, but instead stood to the right of the door out of view of the peephole.

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