The court recessed until August fourth after a day-long hearing.
Additionally, the hearing considered the motion to dismiss.
The case involves former Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Deputy Eddie Duran.
The sheriff’s office fired Duran.
They charged him with the murder of Hurlburt Special Operations Airman Roger Fortson after the May 2024 shooting.
The motion is the latest in a series of requests by the defense team.
Additionally, the attorneys led by Rod Smith, and Roger Fortson, along with Michael Flowers, included loosening of Duran’s bond conditions.
They also sought to relax travel restrictions to allow transporting his children.
Witnesses brought by the defense and the prosecution varied from witnesses to the immediate mental state of Fortson before he was shot, to the assistant medical examiner, and Fortson’s girlfriend – who witnessed the death while FaceTiming with Fortson.
Related: Former Okaloosa deputy charged in death of Hurlburt airman.
Fortson’s Girlfriend, who was on FaceTime with him when he was shot, testifies at dismissal hearing.
The most emotional testimony came from Fortson’s then-girlfriend Tatyiana Hendricks – who battled back and forth with the Defense Attorney regarding her testimony in a deposition that she had suffered PTSD as a result of the event. In her previous testimony during the deposition, she’d mentioned that PTSD had caused some memory loss. Rod Smith, Eddie Duran’s defense counsel, appeared to break down her testimony for trial by pointing this out and asking her how her memory could be valid if she’d had PTSD from the incident that caused memory loss. She responded that the memories flood back over time.
Smith directed his attention to ascertaining more details about Hendricks and Fortson’s state of mind after the series of knocks by then-deputy Duran at his front door. Hendricks explained to Smith that they heard a knock on the door, but it was so quiet they were not sure it had taken place. The second knock was audible. Smith asked if Fortson had said whether or not it was an ex-girlfriend. She recounted that he told her he would not answer the door. By the third knock, Hendricks testified that Fortson put his call with her down so that she could only see the ceiling and that he was going to get his gun. “We didn’t hear a voice saying anything,” she would later tell the defense attorney.
Before the cross-examination by Smith, Hendricks told the prosecution she heard “a commotion,” but not gunshots during the killing, and began to record the FaceTime call on her phone because she thought Fortson was being “restrained.”
Hendricks broke down on the stand as she recounted what happened next. “I heard Roger say he couldn’t breathe,” she told the prosecutor, before telling the court she heard a deputy’s voice call out that he’d shot six times and call out on his radio for EMS to be dispatched to his location at the apartment complex.
Smith finished his cross-examination by attacking Hendricks’s assertion that Fortson had fallen on the ground after he’d been shot. Body camera video of the incident showed Fortson on the ground, though he was out of sight of Fortson’s camera that he’d been FaceTime-ing Hendricks on.
RELATED: Former deputy jailed for killing of Hurlburt airman.
Medical Examiner Testimony
After lunch, the District One Assistant Medical Examiner, Dr. Danielle Armstrong, testified to her findings during Fortson’s autopsy.
The judge used his authority to ban the viewing of autopsy photographs. It protected the privacy of Fortson and his family.
The prosecution took the Doctor through a granular explanation of the autopsy, talking about each wound on the stand.
Other testimonies
In addition to Hendricks’s testimony, Fortson’s friend Charles Johnson and the neighbor who lived below his apartment, Airman Calan Sims, and Leasing Agent Keely Rodriguez testified to the court.
Witnesses who saw him personally before the shooting say he was in a good mood. His neighbor downstairs testified to a pattern of loud, angry conversations coming from a vent in her apartment that connected to another apartment. The leasing agent noted she did not hear any sounds of violence from Fortson’s apartment immediately preceding the killing, and that she had heard angry raised voices from the same spot a couple of weeks prior.
Charles Johnson – Fortson’s best friend
Johnson testified that he’d seen Fortson roughly 30 minutes before he was shot and that he was in high spirits. He’d received a call from Hendricks and told her he would call her later. He then left to go home – according to Johnson. Johnson insisted that he was not angry or yelling before the shooting.
The defense took the time to question him about his red shirt – which had a slogan demanding accountability for the killing that took place. Duran’s attorney asked him about the shirt and then asked him whether or not he was a witness to the shooting – to which Johnson answered he was not. Finally, the defense counsel asked him if he’d ever witnessed Fortson behaving aggressively or angrily against his girlfriend. Johnson noted that they did argue from time to time, but within the realm of “Typical boyfriend-girlfriend stuff.”
Airman Calan Sims – Fortson’s downstairs neighbor
After Johnson, Fortson’s former downstairs neighbor, Airman Calan Sims, testified that she had heard arguing before through a vent in her apartment that made it easier to hear voices from other units. Sims was home from her job on convalescent leave to recover from wisdom teeth removal.
Sims called the leasing office on May 3, the day of the shooting, to report an argument she believed might be getting out of hand, noting what sounded like the moving of furniture and raised voices coming from the vent. Sims would later tell Duran’s lead defense attorney that she’d heard arguments in the apartment above about six weeks before. They were so loud that she’d thumped on her ceiling with a broom handle or another instrument in an effort to get her upstairs neighbor to quiet down. The leasing agent, as shown in a recorded phone call entered into evidence, told her that she would have to call law enforcement if she wanted to pursue the matter further. Sims told the court that by the time she heard the situation had “simmered down.” So, she said, she chose not to pursue it with law enforcement.
RELATED: Okaloosa releases tapes from death of Hurlburt airman
She called police about 10 minutes later to report the sound of gunshots – about the same time Deputy Duran arrived at Fortson’s door and subsequently shot him to death. During her deposition and in court on August 3, Sims noted that she’d heard someone yelling, “You got me all fucked up. I’m sick of you lying to my face,” and that the male voice she’d heard say it was the only one she heard until she heard another voice in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.
Keely Rodriguez – Chez Élan’s leasing agent on duty during the shooting
After Sims, the prosecution called Keely Rodriguez, the leasing agent, to the stand. Rodriguez testified through tears and tissues that she had called the Sheriff’s Office non-emergency line number deputies had given her previously when the apartment had to deal with trespassers on the property. She tookSims’s call and called the non-emergency line immediately afterward, despite telling Sims that the young airman would have to make the call if she wanted law enforcement to come out to the scene because the apartment complex would not involve itself in the situation. Once she’d called the Sheriff’s number, she walked outside while still on the phone to see if she could hear anything in the place she’d stood several weeks prior and heard loud arguing from the same apartment block. She didn’t.
Immediately after getting to her spot, Rodriguez linked up with Deputy Duran and explained how to get to the apartment in question.
Proceedings
Both attorneys noted that the testimony for the prosecution moved faster than they previously believed they would. The attorneys believe they will be able to finish all of their testimony by Wednesday at the latest.
We’ll stay on this.
