White woman accused of fatally shooting Black neighbor through a door is arrested
A white Florida woman was arrested Tuesday in the fatal shooting of her Black neighbor last week in the violent culmination of what has been described as a 2½-year feud, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office said.
Susan Louise Lorincz, 58, was arrested on charges of manslaughter with a firearm, culpable negligence, battery and two counts of assault in the death of her neighbor Ajike Owens, a 35-year-old mother of four, Sheriff Billy Woods said in a statement.
Authorities came under pressure Tuesday to arrest and charge Lorincz, who police say fired at Owens through her own front door in a case that has put Florida’s divisive “stand your ground” law back into the spotlight.
In a video posted on Facebook late Tuesday, Woods said this was not a “stand your ground” case but “simply a killing.”
“Many of you were struggling to understand why there was not an immediate arrest,” the sheriff said. “The laws here in the state of Florida are clear. Now I may not like them. I may not agree with them. ... however, those laws I will follow.”
The video shared by the sheriff’s office showed two detectives and a deputy escorting Lorincz down a hallway with her hands behind her back.
The shootings of four young people after simple, everyday mistakes have shone a spotlight on the proliferation of ‘stand your ground’ laws in the U.S.
Jail records show that Lorincz has been booked, but do not list a lawyer who could speak on her behalf. Lorincz was not attending a first appearance in court Wednesday because she needs to be cleared medically, sheriff’s officials said in a statement.
In a news conference at New St. John Missionary Baptist Church on Wednesday afternoon, the victim’s family and friends and community leaders joined civil rights attorney Ben Crump in thanking the sheriff for making the arrest, while calling for justice for Owens.
“This is not a difficult case,” Crump said. He called on the state attorney’s office to “zealously prosecute” the shooter.
Crump, along with Owens’ mother and multiple neighbors, noted during the news conference that the “feud” the sheriff spoke of was between Lorincz and neighborhood children, who often played in a lot outside her home. Neighbors said Lorincz frequently called the children vile names and antagonized them.
That had happened again on Friday night, they said. Sheriff’s deputies responded to a trespassing call and found Owens with gunshot wounds.
The neighborhood of single-story duplexes and quadruplexes is in the rolling hills outside Ocala. The area is known for its thoroughbred horse farms, which surround the working-class neighborhood.
Lorincz told investigators she had acted in self-defense and that Owens had been trying to break down her door, the sheriff said. She also told them that Owens had come after her in the past, and had even attacked her.
Sheriff Woods said the investigation, which included eyewitness statements, established that Lorincz’s actions were not justifiable under Florida law.
Earlier, he had said that due to the stand-your-ground law, he couldn’t make an arrest unless the shooter wasn’t acting in self-defense.
According to the sheriff’s account, Owens was shot moments after she went to Lorincz’s apartment because Lorincz had yelled at Owens’ children as they played outside. He said Lorincz had thrown a pair of skates that hit one of the children.
The sheriff’s office hasn’t confirmed that Lorincz used slurs or whether race was a factor in the shooting.
Owens’ mother, Pamela Dias, said Wednesday that her two young grandsons, 12 and 9, are dealing with feelings of guilt, and that they were with their mom outside Lorincz’s house that evening and saw her get shot.
‘The suburbs of Kansas City north of the Missouri River have long held a reputation of not being the most welcoming to Black families.’
“Our 12-year-old blames himself for the death of his mother because he couldn’t save her. He couldn’t give her CPR,” Dias said.
Hours before the arrest Tuesday, some three dozen protesters gathered outside the Marion County Judicial Center, demanding the shooter’s arrest in the country’s latest flashpoint over race and gun violence. Florida’s chief prosecutor, State Atty. William Gladson, met with the protesters and urged them to be patient while the investigation continued.
“If we are going to make a case, we need as much time and as much evidence as possible,” Gladson said. “I don’t want to compromise any criminal investigation.”
In a statement late Tuesday, Crump said that although Owens’ family is “relieved” that an arrest has been made, they remain concerned that it has taken this long due to “archaic laws like Stand Your Ground.”
Crump also represented Trayvon Martin’s family in 2012, after the Black teenager was killed in a case that drew worldwide attention to Florida’s “stand your ground” law.
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Lauren Smith, 40, lives across the street from where the shooting happened. She was on her porch Friday and saw one of Owens’ young sons pacing and shouting: “They shot my mama! They shot my mama!”
She ran toward the house and began chest compressions on Owens until a rescue crew arrived. She said that there hadn’t been an altercation and that Owens didn’t have a weapon.
“She was angry all the time that the children were playing out there,” Smith said of Lorincz. “She would say nasty things to them. Just nasty.”
Smith, who is white, described the neighborhood as otherwise family-friendly.
A 20-year-old woman on her way to a friend’s house in upstate New York was driven to the wrong address and was quickly shot to death by the homeowner.
The sheriff said that deputies had responded to at least half a dozen calls since January 2021 in connection with what police described as feuding between Owens and Lorincz.
“Stand your ground” cases have been deemed justifiable five times more frequently when a white shooter kills a Black victim, according to Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.
In 2017, Florida lawmakers shifted the burden of proof for self-defense from a shooter’s lawyers to prosecutors. Before the change in law, prosecutors could charge someone with a shooting, and then defense attorneys would have to present an affirmative defense for why their client shouldn’t be convicted. Now authorities must rule out self-defense before bringing charges.
A man shot two cheerleaders in a Texas supermarket parking lot after one of them said she mistakenly got into his car thinking it was her own.
“Stand your ground” and “castle doctrine” cases — in which the law or court precedent allows residents to defend themselves when threatened — have sparked outrage amid a spate of shootings across the country.
In April, 84-year-old Andrew Lester, a white man, shot and injured Ralph Yarl, a Black teenager who rang his doorbell in Kansas City. Yarl mistakenly went to the wrong house to pick up his younger siblings. Lester faces criminal charges. At trial, he may argue that he thought someone was trying to break into his house.
Missouri and Florida are among about 30 states that have “stand your ground” laws. George Zimmerman’s fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012 drew worldwide attention to Florida’s law. A Florida jury acquitted Zimmerman of murder in the Black teenager’s death.
Owens’ mother said she will now raise her four young grandchildren.
“I pray that God gives me the strength, the wisdom and the ability to raise these children as our daughter would have us to do,” Dias said, adding that family and friends were helping. “I thank God that I don’t have to do it alone.”
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