White Neighbor Who Fatally Shot Black Mom Through Front Door Arrested
The family of a Black mother who was fatally shot through a front door by a white neighbor who had allegedly hurled racial slurs in the past say they are “elated” by the neighbor’s arrest—but disappointed that it only came after days of protests and outrage.
Susan Lorincz, 58, was charged on Tuesday with manslaughter with a firearm in relation to the death of 35-year-old Ajike “AJ” Owens last week, according to the Marion County Sheriff’s Office.
“I am elated that there was an arrest. It’s disappointing that it took so long to happen,” Owens’ mother, Pamela Dias, told MSNBC on Wednesday. “My daughter was shot behind a locked door…It was a senseless act that didn’t have to happen. I am left to care for [my] precious grandbabies because their mother was taken away from them. It’s devastating, it’s heartbreaking.”
Ajike Owens.
Authorities said a Major Crimes Unit investigation found that the incident began with Lorincz becoming “angry at Owens’ children” as they played in a field near her home in Ocala, Florida, on Friday night. Neighbors said the woman took the kids’ iPad after they accidentally left it behind.
When the children went back for the tablet, Lorincz allegedly threw a roller skate at Owens’ 10-year-old son and swung at the children with an umbrella, according to authorities. When they told their mom what happened, Owens knocked on Lorincz’s door multiple times and demanded that Lorincz come outside—it was then that authorities say Lorincz fired a single, fatal shot through the door.
Lorincz allegedly claimed she’d acted in self-defense, and Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods initially said he wasn’t able to arrest her due to Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which requires cops to rule out self-defense.
That changed on Tuesday, however, after “detectives were able to establish that Lorincz’s actions were not justifiable under Florida law,” the sheriff’s office said.
Andras Szieberth, a horse trainer and breeder in Wellborn, told The Daily Beast that he had been friends with Lorincz for close to 20 years and kept her three horses at his stable. Like her family, he emigrated from Hungary, and they held traditional Hungarian dinners together. He described Lorincz as “eccentric” but said he was “absolutely shocked” by the shooting.
“I had absolutely no idea she was racist towards that family,” he said.
Szieberth, who said he was very much against the current gun culture, said he was also unaware Lorincz owned a gun.
“It’s the crazy Republicans,” he told The Daily Beast. “What’s happen[ing] is the country has been going in a different direction because of the population change.”
He said that former President Barack Obama brought racists “out the woodwork” and former President Donald Trump “legitimized” their views.
The Owens family’s attorney, Ben Crump, urged prosecutors to factor in Lorincz’s alleged history of racial abuse, telling MSNBC that there was a “plethora of witnesses” in the neighborhood who described Lorincz as “a menace to the neighborhood, not just to AJ’s children, but all the children, calling them racial epithets, calling them the n-word, calling them profane names, saying that this is not the Underground Railroad.”
(One neighbor, Ashley Remy, told WFTV that almost everyone in the area had called police in the past about Lorincz yelling at children and calling them names.)
“She did not deserve to be taken from the earth in this manner,” Crump said as he gathered with the family and other supporters on Tuesday. “That’s something we have to keep screaming at the top of our lungs: Justice for AJ!”
In a GoFundMe page set up on behalf of her daughter, Dias described Owens as “a devoted and loving mother of four” who was “tragically and unjustifiably murdered in an attempt to protect her children from racism and violence.”
Dias told MSNBC it had been unbearable to see her grandchildren lose their mother; two of them witnessed the shooting. “The grief, the pain... words could never, never explain how I feel and how my babies feel, how AJ’s babies feel,” she said.
Lorincz’s manslaughter charge could be punishable by 30 years’ imprisonment. She is also charged with culpable negligence, battery, and two counts of assault.
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