FORT WALTON BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Just two days before a sheriff’s deputy in Florida shot him dead, U.S. Air Force airman Roger Fortson called home to find out what his 10-year-old sister wanted for her birthday.

It was a typical gesture for the 23-year-old from Atlanta, who doted on the girl and was devoted to helping her, a younger brother and his mom prosper, his family says.

“He was trying to give me everything that I never could get for myself,” his mother, Chantemekki Fortson, said Thursday at a news conference in Fort Walton Beach, where her son was living when he was killed.

He was her “gift,” she said, the man who taught her to love and forgive and served as her co-worker and counselor.

An Okaloosa County sheriff’s deputy shot Fortson on May 3. Sheriff’s officials say he acted in self-defense while responding to a call of a disturbance in progress at the apartment complex. But civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the Fortson family, has accused the deputy of going to the wrong apartment and said the shooting was unjustified.