A jury on Friday convicted a white Florida woman for shooting and killing a Black mother of four through her front door in a case that provoked outrage from civil rights advocates and the victim’s family.
Susan Lorincz denied the manslaughter of Ajike “AJ” Owens, who came to her house to remonstrate after the defendant assaulted two of Owens’ children on 2 June last year. Lorincz could receive a prison sentence of up to 30 years in prison at a hearing on a date to be determined.
Pamela Dias, mother of the 35-year-old victim, became emotional as the verdict was read after two and a half hours of deliberations.
“Oh God, thank you,” she said before leaving the courtroom.
The weeklong trial before an all-white jury in Marion county heard there was a history of conflict between Owens and Lorincz, whom neighbors said previously yelled racist slurs at Owens’ children, and struck one of them with a hurled roller skate on the day of the killing.
Other witnesses said Lorincz also threw an iPad and tried to strike the children with an umbrella.
The case has been mired in controversy since the moment Lorincz, 60, fired a single shot from inside her Ocala home that killed Owens, whom she admitted she could not see on the other side of the closed and locked door. She then insisted she acted in self-defense.
The defendant was arrested only several days later, after growing community unrest and initial comments from the Marion county sheriff, Billy Woods, that his hands were tied by Florida’s stand-your-ground law, which allows a person to use deadly force if they feel their life is in imminent danger.
Woods later conceded that the killing was not justified. But further anger was provoked by the state attorney Bill Gladson’s decision to charge Lorincz with manslaughter, not the second-degree murder charge Owens’ family was expecting.
“Her act of shooting through a door where she couldn’t see who was on the other side was a reckless and wanton disregard for human life, which are literally the words that come from the statute of second-degree murder in Florida,” said Melba Pearson, a civil rights attorney and director of prosecution projects at Florida International University’s Jack D Gordon Institute for Public Policy.
Pearson, a former assistant state attorney not involved in the case, questioned why Gladson decided not to file a murder charge with manslaughter as a lesser included offense.
“You argue to the jury, ‘This is a second-degree murder and if you disagree with me, well, here’s this other option of manslaughter, and if you really hated everything I did, hey, it is what it is, not guilty,’” she said.
“At least you’re giving the jury a menu if you’re not 100% confident. But to me, the facts of the case, everything that has come out in the trial, has not shaken my opinion that this was second-degree murder and it was undercharged deliberately.
“There’s no scenario where it doesn’t fit the textbook definition of the charge, but I’m going to be blunt. Central Florida is not exactly the most diverse area of the state, and sadly, there are people that hold, as we saw with the defendant, racist views.”
Dias said she was “shocked” at the all-white makeup of the jury of six women and two men, which the family’s attorney Anthony Thomas said was unrepresentative of the “racial and cultural diversity of Ocala”, a city with a minority population of 40%.
Prosecutors drew little attention to the racial aspects of the case as they called witnesses portraying Lorincz as a curtain-twitching neighbor who would frequently call law enforcement when she became annoyed by children playing loudly in a field next to her home.
Numerous times in previous months, officers testified, she called 911 after altercations with Owens or her children. The eldest two, boys now 13 and 10, were involved in the incident where Lorincz threw the skate, which led to their mother approaching Lorincz’s house and banging on the door.
Witnesses to the fatal shooting, meanwhile, gave evidence that Owens was neither armed nor attempting to break down Lorincz’s door, as the defendant insisted in a video of her police interview played in court.
“I felt like I was in imminent danger, she was so angry,” Lorincz told detectives. “She’s like, ‘I’m going to kill you!’ I thought she was coming right through that damn door.”
Lorincz declined to testify at her trial.
Several witnesses said they heard Owens banging loudly on the door, and one said he heard her say: “Come outside, bitch,” but none said they heard a death threat, and neither was one captured on a Ring doorbell recording of the encounter.
Additionally, prosecutors noted, Lorincz had legally purchased two handguns following a previous disagreement with Owens. They said she also made internet searches for the language of Florida’s “stand your ground” law that she later quoted to investigators.
“It was community and family members that went around to the neighbors and got the Ring footage that showed clearly that AJ was not trying to make entry into the house or anything like that, so it seemed to be a very shoddy, slack investigation from the beginning,” Pearson said.
“I just think there was an undercurrent of race and racism, and an assumption that the defendant must have been right and the victim was a violent, insert your stereotype here, type of person.”
In a statement before the verdict, Owens’ family said the trial had been “a grueling and emotional journey”.
“AJ’s death is not just a singular tragedy, it reflects the systemic racism that continues to permeate every facet of American life. Her story is a stark reminder of the countless lives that have been unjustly taken, the families that have been shattered and the communities that live in fear of racial violence,” they said.
“Yet in this moment of deep sorrow and reflection, we hold on to hope. We hope that this verdict will be a step toward recognizing the humanity in each of us, regardless of the color of our skin. We hope that it will be a catalyst for change, prompting a deeper examination of the structures and systems that allow such tragedies to occur.
“Above all, we hope that AJ’s life, her legacy and her light will continue to inspire and drive the fight for equality and justice.”
