A civil rights attorney says deputies responding to a disturbance call at a Florida apartment complex burst into the wrong unit and fatally shot a Black U.S.

Deputies responding to a disturbance call at a Florida apartment complex burst into the wrong unit and fatally shot a Black U.S. Air Force airman who was home alone when they saw he was armed with a gun, an attorney for the man’s family said Wednesday.

Senior Airman Roger Fortson, 23, who was based at the Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt Field, was in his off-base apartment in Fort Walton Beach when the shooting happened on May 3.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump said in a statement that Fortson was on a Facetime call with a woman at the time of the encounter.

  • Tiefling IRL@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    2·
    6 months ago

    It doesn’t have anything to do with the military. It’s a body mod along the same line as tattoos, piercings, suspension, scarification, subdermal implants, and so on. It likely happens that some military personnel had it done but that’s very much not where it came from.

    • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      6 months ago

      Yeah, I get that it’s a popular body mod. I had a friend in that community and I learned a lot about it and it seems cool. I’m just confused because the body modders I met weren’t exactly the sort of folks I’d see joining the military, especially the Air Force.

      • Kid_Thunder@kbin.social
        3·
        6 months ago

        It was a small group of people circa 2003. They added to the Dress and Appearance AFI as ‘mutilation’ and specifically called it tongue splitting.

        All kinds of people go into the military for various reasons. Many to get out of some way of life back home regardless of how they feel about the military and US policies you know? They can get college paid for, cut ties with whatever or whoever, get a place to live, get meals taken care of, get money in their pocket and maybe learn a trade. Obviously, there’s a lot of cons there too but some people see it as their best way ‘out’ of something.

        Back then OIF/OEF was just kicking off and everyone was all ‘Never Forget’ so the AF had so many people they actually started taking volunteers for people to leave early and then started forcing people out (called Force Reduction), which is crazy with the shear amount of deployments going on but the AF also had too many NCOs as well. So yeah. Shit show as usual.