‘My daughter was shot dead by her neighbour’

Ajike Owens’ four children grew up on a street where childhood memories are made. The family weren’t well-off, but the kids had freedom to play on the lawns and an open field between the homes on a quiet Florida road backed by trees.

They spent days in the close-knit community happily playing football, hide and seek and riding bikes and scooters with their friends, largely supported by their neighbours. 

However, Isaac, Israel (Izzy), Afrika and Titus’ childhoods ended on 2 June 2023 when single mum Ajike – known as AJ – was fatally shot. 

‘Ajike lived for being a mum. She was a football team mum, a cheer mum, very active in their lives. My granddaughter was in dance and gymnastics and Ajike sometimes worked two jobs to support them.

‘She put them in private school and she instilled faith and respect. She was full of life and love, and her friends and community meant everything to her,’ Pamela Dias, Ajike’s mother tells Metro over Zoom from her home in Florida. 

56-year-old Pamela was living in Atlanta, Georgia when she heard the terrible news that her daughter had been killed in the street where her children played. She has since moved to Florida to bring up the children, now aged 15, 12, nine and five.

‘Ajike had struggles, but she had big dreams. She had an entrepreneurial spirit. She would toss around ideas for a business and in our later conversations she would say, “the world is going to know my name.” She believed it.

‘As tragic as it is, The Perfect Neighbor is the vehicle in which the world now knows her name,’ Pamela says sadly. 

Pamela is referring to the Netflix documentary about the rising tensions that led to Ajike’s death.

Through body camera footage, the film shows how over the course of two years, police were called multiple times to the road in Ocala, Florida, to deal with rows between the community and Susan Lorincz – an insurance worker, now 61, who lived alone with her cats. 

‘I’m having problems with my neighbours’ children. They come up to me and scream like idiots. Today I lost it, and called them r******’, Lorincz told the police in one recorded call.

Audio from body cam recordings suggested she said much worse.

Neighbours told police officers Lorincz had called the children ‘slaves’ and ‘n******’, and that the vacant field they were playing on ‘wasn’t the Underground Railroad’.

Later, when questioned by detectives, Lorincz admitted using a racial slur among other derogatory terms about the children. 

The tensions came to a head on 2 June 2023. Lorincz had been filming the children and later that day she threw a pair of roller skates at Izzy.

When Ajike went to confront her, Lorincz shot her dead through the closed door. 

Horrifying body camera footage shows medics unable to revive Ajike on the grass outside her home, as distraught children and neighbours watched on. And it shows the four’s father Eddie delivering the devastating news that ‘mom’s not coming back’, as children howled with grief. 

Lorincz was detained that night, but Marion County Police said they would need to consider Florida’s Stand Your Ground law before making an arrest. She wasn’t arrested and charged until June 7 – after protestors had gathered in and around the courthouse calling for justice for AJ. 

‘Losing a daughter is unnatural. Parents, especially mothers, shouldn’t bury their children. It’s been hard to come to terms with.

‘We were extremely close. We talked every day. She was wise beyond her years, and she was my confidant. Losing her was losing part of me, losing my friend, my firstborn, my baby,’ says Pamela. 

Now, she is focusing her energy on the children who, she says, ‘are doing the best they can’ and ensuring they have all the support they need in their grief.

‘The hurt hasn’t subsided. There’s a void in their hearts no one can fill. They’re the bravest people I know. They get up every day and go forward, but they still mourn and weep for their mother. This is trauma they’ll carry for the rest of their lives,’ Pamela explains. 

After the shooting, Lorencz was detained but it was days before she was arrested and charged – leaving the community up in arms that a white woman had shot an unarmed black mother who was sticking up for her children.

Chillingly, the day Lorincz killed Ajike, she had looked up Stand Your Ground laws on her computer, and police found two guns on her property. 

Applied differently in various states, under Stand Your Ground in Florida, individuals are allowed to use deadly force in self-defence if they feel that their life is in danger. Florida’s law led to the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman, who shot unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

Many critics of the laws argue they have been used to justify violence against marginalised groups. And a study by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that justifiable homicide rulings are issued in 45% of cases with white shooters but only 11% when the shooter is Black.

In the early days, when it appeared Lorincz may get away with the shooting, director Geeta Gandbhir started filming the community’s response along with a friend of the Ajike’s family.

The idea to make a documentary from the footage came later, following inspiration from Emmet Till, a 14-year-old African American whose violent death in 1955 kickstarted the civil rights movement. 

Emmett Till’s mother declined an offer from the mortician to ‘touch up’ her son’s beaten and abused body, taking the decision to have an open casket funeral so that everyone could see first hand what had happened to him.

‘Similarly, we wanted the world to know what happened to Ajike,’ Geeta tells Metro. 

‘We made the film to show, not tell. We believe viewers will understand how this played out, how Susan was always a threat but wasn’t seen that way because of race and privilege. Police saw her as a nuisance, not a danger, and failed the community,’ Geeta explains. 

‘Police body cameras are usually tools of surveillance against people of colour. We wanted to subvert that and show the beauty of this community. How even in tragedy, neighbours rallied despite the danger. 

‘We hope audiences see that this is the world we want to live in, that these are the people we want to be. Stand Your Ground laws polarise us. They teach us to fear our neighbours, and that leads to greater atrocities.

‘If you will pick up a gun against your neighbour, what else will you tolerate? We hope people reject that and demand better for themselves and their communities.’ 

Raising awareness around how ‘dangerous and deadly’ these laws are motivated Pamela to become involved in the documentary.

‘I wanted to honour my daughter’s legacy. I didn’t want the world to become immune to violence, to gun violence, to racial issues. I wanted people to see the need for meaningful impact, to make real change, not just see another sad story. 

‘We want people to understand what hate does, what guns in the wrong hands do.’ 

In the wake of Ajike’s death, Pamela co-founded the Standing in the Gap Fund with family friend Takema Robinson, a charity which supports families impacted by racial violence. 

In August last year, Susan Lorincz, was convicted of manslaughter by a Florida jury and in November she was sentenced to 25 years behind bars. 

The presiding judge stated that he found the shooting to be based more in anger than fear.

Police footage shows Lorincz vacillating between playing the victim; telling police officers she had been traumatised by a previous sexual attack – a statement she later retracted – and acting with entitlement, disobeying police orders and resisting arrest. 

Pamela tells Metro: ‘Lorincz has never shown real remorse. She always played the victim, used her privilege. 

‘I feel sorry for her. It’s sad someone could carry such hate and venom, especially for children. She disliked them playing innocently where they were authorised to.

‘She was selfish, mean and hateful. My faith has helped me try to forgive her. I feel I have, but it’s hard knowing someone with that much hatred took my daughter’s life.’ 

The Perfect Neighbour is released on Netflix on 17th October and at select cinemas from 10 October 

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