“Florida Mother Fatally Shot by Neighbor: Remembering Ajike ‘AJ’ Shantrell Owens”
In the wake of her killing, AJ Owens’ family and friends started an impact campaign in her honor
Ajike “AJ” Shantrell Owens will be remembered as a devoted mother.
On June 2, 2023, the mother of four, who was Black, was fatally shot through a locked door by her neighbor, Susan Lorincz, a White woman. The devastating incident occurred after nearly two years of vitriol slowly escalating in their Ocala, Fla., neighborhood, during which Lorincz not only made several 911 calls about the children on the block, but also admitted to directing racial slurs at them
Lorincz was found guilty of manslaughter in August 2024 and was later sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Now, the tragic story is being shared with the world in a new Netflix documentary, titled The Perfect Neighbor. Owens’ mother, Pamela Dias, ahead of its Oct. 17 release that the film is “more than just our pain and our tragedy and our suffering, and it’s more than my daughter being murdered.”
“It’s a message about racism, bias, how guns in the wrong hands can turn deadly, weaponizing laws like Stand Your Ground,” she said, referencing the legal principle that Lorincz’s defense used in court. “So I realized that I had a responsibility to share my daughter’s story if I ever expected true change.”
Here’s everything to know about the late Ajike “AJ” Owens.
She was a mother of four
Owens was a mom to four children: sons Isaac, Titus and Israel, and daughter Afrika.
In the aftermath of the shooting, Dias set up a GoFundMe, which described Owens as a “single mother whose life centered around her children.”
“To say she loved her children unconditionally is an understatement,” the statement read.
Per the page, the mother of four served as the “Team Mom” for her children’s sports teams.
“How she did it, I don’t know, but she was very hands-on,” Dias said of Owens, noting that she also volunteered in their classrooms and made time to cook a family meal every night for her children.
She worked in the restaurant and hospitality industry
When Owens wasn’t spending her time as the “Team Mom” of her kids’ sports teams, she was working as a restaurant manager.
The Perfect Neighbor director Geeta Gandbhir, who was family friends with Owens, opened up about the late mother while accepting the film’s U.S. Documentary Directing Albie Award, explaining that she had “a lot of big dreams.”
“She wanted to be an entrepreneur and she used to always talk about how the whole world one day will know my name,” the filmmaker explained. “It feels a bit like what we are doing now — we see it as fulfilling her dream.”
She was fatally shot by Susan Lorincz
On June 2, 2023, Owens was fatally shot through a locked door by Lorincz, who lived across the street from her in their neighborhood in Ocala, Fla.
According to Dias’ statement on the GoFundMe, Owens’ children were playing in a field next to the Ocala apartment complex when Lorincz began yelling at them and calling them racial slurs. the children left the field, but left a tablet behind. They alleged that Lorincz then picked up the tablet, though she denied taking it.
