MAY 17, 2024:
STONECREST, Ga. (AP) — Hundreds of Air Force members in dress blues have joined Roger Fortson’s family, friends and others at a suburban Atlanta megachurch to pay their final respects to the Black senior airman, who was shot and killed in his Florida home earlier this month by a sheriff’s deputy. People lined up well before the start of Friday’s (May 17, 2024) service at the church in Stonecrest to file past the open casket to say their goodbyes to Fortson. He was shot May 3 by a deputy responding to a possible domestic violence situation at Fortson’s apartment complex. Fortson’s face and upper body were visible in his Air Force uniform, with an American flag draped over the lower portion of the casket.
MAY 16, 2024:
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Florida deputy’s fatal shooting of a U.S. service member has jarred the former top enlisted officer of the Air Force. In 2020, Chief Master Sgt. Kaleth O. Wright warned that his greatest fear was waking up to news that police had killed a Black airman. The death of Senior Airman Roger Fortson has community leaders including the NAACP asking whether unconscious bias led the deputy to shoot the young service member simply because he was a young, Black male and ask what, if anything, can be done to prevent this kind of tragedy. The investigation into Fortson’s death is ongoing. The sheriff’s office says they received the local NAACP’s “list of demands and understand their concerns.”
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