A former Florida sheriff’s deputy charged with killing a Black U.S. Air Force senior airman who answered his apartment door while holding a gun pointed toward the ground was arrested Monday, officials said.
Former Okaloosa County deputy Eddie Duran, 38, was charged with manslaughter with a firearm in the May 3 shooting death of 23-year-old Roger Fortson, Assistant State Attorney Greg Marcille announced Friday. The charge is a first-degree felony punishable by up to 30 years in prison.
Duran was booked into the county jail Monday, records show. Marcille confirmed his arrest to The Associated Press.
“He did, in fact, turn himself in,” Marcille said in a telephone interview, adding that Duran's initial court appearance will be via video link Tuesday morning. “He will be held in custody pending his initial appearance.”
An attorney representing Duran did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Authorities say Duran had been directed to Fortson’s Fort Walton Beach apartment in response to a domestic disturbance report that turned out to be false.
After repeated knocking, Fortson opened the door while holding his handgun at his side, pointed down. Authorities say that Duran shot him multiple times; only then did he tell Fortson to drop the gun.
On Friday, the day the charge was announced, candles and framed photos of Fortson in uniform graced the doorway of the apartment where he was killed.
According to the internal affairs report of the shooting, Duran told investigators that when Fortson opened the door, he saw aggression in the airman’s eyes. He said he fired because, “I’m standing there thinking I’m about to get shot, I’m about to die.”
Okaloosa Sheriff Eric Aden fired Duran on May 31 after an internal investigation concluded his life was not in danger when he opened fire. Outside law enforcement experts have also said that an officer cannot shoot only because a possible suspect is holding a gun if there is no threat.
Duran is a law enforcement veteran, starting as a military police officer in the Army. He joined the Okaloosa County sheriff’s office in July 2019, but resigned two years later, saying his wife, a nurse, had been transferred to a Naval hospital out of the area. He rejoined the sheriff’s office in June 2023.
Okaloosa personnel records show he was reprimanded in 2021 for not completing his assignment to confirm the addresses of three registered sex offenders by visiting their homes, telling a colleague he didn’t care about them. Then assigned to a high school as its on-campus deputy, he was also disciplined that year for leaving the school before the final bell and the students’ departure. Florida law requires that an armed guard be on campus when class is in session.
Records of 911 calls show deputies had never been called to Fortson’s apartment previously but they had been summoned to a nearby unit 10 times in the previous eight months, including once for a domestic disturbance.
Anderson reported from St. Petersburg, Florida. Martin reported from Atlanta.
The Okaloosa County Courthouse is seen Friday, Aug. 23, 2024, in Crestview, Fla. (AP Photo/Kate Payne)
FILE - U.S. Air Force personnel stand near the coffin of slain airman Roger Fortson during his funeral at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, Friday, May 17, 2024, near Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, File)
Candles and framed photos of Roger Fortson, a U.S. Air Force senior airman who was fatally shot by a Fla. sheriff's deputy on May 3, 2024, sit on Friday, Aug. 23, in the doorway of the apartment where he was killed in Fort Walton Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Kate Payne)
FILE - Chantemekki Fortson, mother of slain Roger Fortson, a U.S. Air Force senior airman, holds a photo of her son during a news conference with attorney Ben Crump on Monday, June 3, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, File)
Aircraft assembly workers walked off the job at at Boeing factories near Seattle and elsewhere early Friday after union members voted overwhelmingly to go on strike.
Boeing is just the latest business to grapple with union workers over issues including wages and benefits like health care.
Here's a look at some recent company negotiations with their unions.
Late last year the United Auto Workers union overwhelmingly ratified new contracts with Ford and Stellantis, along with a similar deal with General Motors, that would raise pay across the industry and force automakers to absorb higher costs.
The agreements, which run through April 2028, ended contentious talks that began in the summer of 2022 and led to six-week-long strikes at all three automakers.
The new contract agreements were widely seen as a victory for the UAW. The companies agreed to dramatically raise pay for top-scale assembly plant workers, with increases and cost-of-living adjustments that would translate into 33% wage gains.
Top assembly plant workers were to receive immediate 11% raises and would earn roughly $42 an hour when the contracts expire in April of 2028.
Under the agreements, the automakers also ended many of the multiple tiers of wages they had used to pay different workers. They also agreed in principle to bring new electric-vehicle battery plants into the national union contract.
UPS workers that are members of the Teamsters union approved a tentative contract with the package delivery company last year. The run up to the approval was not smooth though, with contentious labor negotiations that threatened to disrupt package deliveries for millions of businesses and households nationwide.
After negotiations broke down in early July 2023, Atlanta-based UPS reached a tentative contract agreement with the Teamsters just days before an Aug. 1 deadline.
At the time the tentative agreement was struck, full- and part-time union workers were set to get $2.75 more per hour in 2023, and $7.50 more in total by the end of the five-year contract. Starting hourly pay for part-time employees also got bumped up to $21, but some workers said that fell short of their expectations.
UPS said at the time that by the end of the new contract, the average UPS full-time driver would make about $170,000 annually in pay and benefits. It was not clear how much of that figure benefits accounted for.
As part of the deal, the delivery company also agreed to make Martin Luther King Jr. Day a full holiday, end forced overtime on drivers’ days off and stop using driver-facing cameras in cabs, among a host of other issues. It eliminated a two-tier wage system for drivers and tentative deals on safety issues were also reached, including equipping more trucks with air conditioning.
Earlier this month video game performers reached agreements with 80 individual games that have signed interim or tiered budget agreements with the performers’ union and accepted the artificial intelligence provisions they have been seeking.
The performers had been striking for over a month.
Members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists began striking in July after negotiations with game industry giants that began more than a year and a half ago came to a halt over AI protections.
The interim agreement secures wage improvements, protections around “exploitative uses” of artificial intelligence and safety precautions that account for the strain of physical performances, as well as vocal stress. The tiered budget agreement aims to make working with union talent more feasible for independent game developers or smaller-budget projects while also providing performers the protections under the interim agreement.
Last month thousands of hospitality union workers on the Las Vegas Strip reached a tentative deal with the Venetian and Palazzo resorts, a first for employees at the sprawling Italian-inspired complex that opened 25 years ago.
The Culinary Workers Union announced on the social platform X that the deal came together after a year of negotiations. It covers over 4,000 hotel and casino workers, from housekeepers and cocktail servers to bartenders and porters.
Bethany Khan, a union spokesperson, said the deal mirrors the major wins secured in recent contracts awarded to 40,000 hospitality workers at 18 Strip properties owned or operated by casino giants MGM Resorts International, Caesars Entertainment and Wynn Resorts.
Those wins included a 32% pay increase over five years, housekeeping workload reductions and improved job security amid advancements in technology and artificial intelligence.
The bump in pay under those contracts will amount to an average $35 hourly wage by the end of the contracts, according to the union. Workers at these properties were making about $26 hourly with benefits before winning their latest contracts in November.
Unions representing 85,000 health care workers reached a tentative agreement with industry giant Kaiser Permanente in October 2023 following a strike over wages and staffing levels.
The deal included setting minimum hourly wages at $25 in California, where most of Kaiser’s facilities are located, and $23 in other states. Workers would also see a 21% wage increase over four years.
The lead up to the tentative agreement included a three-day strike involving 75,000 workers in multiple states.
The tentative agreement also included protective terms around subcontracting and outsourcing, as well as initiatives to invest in the current workforce and address a staffing crisis.
Hollywood’s actors voted to ratify a deal with studios in December 2023 that ended their strike after nearly four months, bringing an official finish to a labor strife that shook the entertainment industry for most of last year.
Members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists approved a three-year contract.
Control over the use of artificial intelligence was the most hard-fought issue in the long, methodical negotiations. The contract called for a 7% general pay increase with further hikes coming in the second and third years of the deal.
The agreement also included a hard-won provision that temporarily derailed talks: the creation of a fund to pay performers for future viewings of their work on streaming services, in addition to traditional residuals paid for the showing of movies or series.
Boeing Machinists Union members Steven Wilson, left, Dave Hendrickson, center,, and Mark Erickson, right, wave to passing traffic while on the picket line at the Renton assembly plant, Friday, Sept. 13, 2024, in Renton, Wash. (AP Photo/John Froschauer)
