Questions and grief linger at the apartment door where a deputy killed a US airman

WASHINGTON — Near the door of the apartment where a Florida deputy shot and killed senior airman Roger Fortson, a small shrine grows with tributes from the Air Force unit grappling with his loss.

There is a long wooden plank, anchored by two sets of aviator wings, and a black marker for mourners to leave prayers and memories for the 23-year-old.

One visitor left an open Stella Artois beer. Others left behind combat boots, bouquets and an American flag. On either side of the door are 105mm and 30mm shells, like the ones Fortson handled as a gunner on the unit’s AC-130J special operations aircraft; the empty 105mm grenade is filled with flowers.

Then there is the quarter.

In military tradition, rooms are left quietly and often anonymously if a fellow soldier was there at the time of death.

The 1st Special Operations Wing in the Florida Panhandle, where Fortson served, took time from its normal duties Monday to process his death and “focus members’ attention inward, using small group discussions, raising voices and reaching out dealing with teammates,” said the 1st Special Operations Wing in the Florida Panhandle. Wing said in a statement.

A heated debate has erupted in multiple online forums in the week since Fortson was shot: Did the police have the right apartment? A caller reported a domestic disturbance, but Fortson was alone. Why would the deputy shoot so quickly? Why would the police kill a soldier?

There are also questions about whether race played a role because Fortson is Black, and there are echoes of the police killing of George Floyd.

Fortson was holding his legal gun when he opened his front door, but it was pointed at the ground. Based on body camera footage released by the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office, the deputy only ordered Fortson to drop the gun after shooting him.

“We know our air commanders are seeing the growing media reporting and are having conversations about what happened,” Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind, head of Air Force Special Operations Command, said in a message to unit leaders last week .

He urged those leaders to listen in an effort to understand their troops: “We have grieving teammates on different journeys.”

In 2020, following Floyd’s death, then-Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Kaleth O. Wright wrote an emotional letter to his troops about the police killings of black men and children: “I am a black man who happens to be the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force. “I’m George Floyd…I’m Philando Castile, I’m Michael Brown, I’m Alton Sterling, I’m Tamir Rice.”

At the time, Wright was among a handful of black military leaders, including current Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. CQ Brown Jr., who said they needed to do something about the killing and how it affected them.

“My biggest fear is not that I will be murdered by a white police officer (believe me, my heart starts racing like most other black men in America when I see those blue lights behind me)… but that I will wake up with report that one of our black pilots was killed at the hands of a white police officer,” Wright wrote at the time.

Wright, who is now retired, posted a photo on his personal Facebook page Thursday showing Fortson with his little sister in matching flight suits.

“Who am I…I am SrA Roger Fortson,” Wright wrote. “This is what I was always afraid of. Praying for his family. RIH young king.”

On Friday, many from Fortson’s unit will travel to Georgia to attend his funeral, with a flyover of Special Operations AC-130s planned.

“You were taken too soon,” another senior airman wrote on the wooden plank near Fortson’s front door. “No justice no peace.”