'The Perfect Neighbor' Recap: Where Are Susan Lorincz And The Owens Family Now?

With the necessary regular use of bodycams in police service in the United States, it was only a matter of time before entire documentary films would be made using such footage, giving true crime stories an even more authentic and intense feel. In her latest documentary film, The Perfect Neighbor, Geeta Gandhbir not only manages to bring out these characteristics but also a genuine sense of sympathy for the victim’s family, almost entirely through the use of footage from police bodycams and security cameras. The Perfect Neighbor tells the harrowing story of Ajike Owens and her neighbor, Susan Lorincz, which ultimately had a horrific conclusion. 

Who is Susan Lorincz?

As The Perfect Neighbor is presented through the perspective of the multiple police officers involved with the case, we get an introduction to Susan Lorincz through bodycam footage as well. The first footage that we see is from February 25th, 2022, when officers from the Marion County Sheriff’s office in Ocala, Florida, responded to a 911 emergency call in a residential neighborhood. The call had been made by a 58-year-old woman named Susan Lorincz, who had felt threatened after an altercation with her neighbor, Ajike Owens. As the police talked with both sides, an image of what had happened became quite clear to them. Ajike’s children were walking their dog on a vacant lot right next to Susan’s house, which the latter really did not like for a number of reasons. 

Firstly, Susan felt disturbed by the loud shouting of the children in the neighborhood, particularly on the piece of land right next to her house, and they apparently gave her a headache often. Secondly, she believed that the land was private property, and the children had no right to be there, let alone play there or walk their dogs on it. As Susan confronted the children, their mother, Ajike, came out of her house, situated on the other side of the narrow street, and got into an argument with her. Susan started taking photos of the children in order to gather proof of their misdemeanor, which Ajike did not like, threatening asking the elder woman to stop. When Susan did not listen to her demand, Ajike picked up a “No Trespassing” sign from the very land where her children had been playing and threw it at her, aiming at her legs and slightly injuring her as well.

While the matter, from Susan’s perspective, already seemed like a minor spat, it started to seem even more insignificant to the police when they spoke to Ajike and the other neighbors. Firstly, all the children in the neighborhood were used to playing football on the piece of land from long before Susan had moved into the adjacent house, and there was really no need for them to stop, on legal or moral grounds. Secondly, the piece of land did not belong to Susan Lorincz or the owner of her rented house either, but to a man who was fully aware of it being used as a playground by the children and had no problems with it. To sum up the whole situation, everyone stated that Ajike had only picked up the sign and angrily tossed it away, neither aiming at Susan nor hitting her. It was quite clear that Susan had overreacted to an otherwise simple situation, but it was not the first time she had called the cops on the neighbors’ kids, and it would not be the last either.

On August 10th, the police received a call from Susan again, this time simply because children had been screaming and hollering while innocently playing on the empty ground. According to the neighbors, she would often come out of her house and hurl abuse at the kids, and then photograph them as well, to gather ‘evidence’ against them. On December 22nd, she called the police and told them that the children were trying to fool around with her truck, and one of them even tried to put his dog into the flatbed of her truck. Just like before, multiple neighbors gave a completely opposite story to the police—Susan had recently started putting off the alarms on her truck herself every few minutes, just to frame the kids, and the dog that she supposedly saw being put into her vehicle was too big and heavy for any kid to pick up. 

Susan would claim that the children were disrespectful and abusive towards her, which made her feel threatened, while the neighbors would reveal that it was she who insulted them by hurling profanity at them. On a couple of occasions in 2023, the kids even reported having been threatened by the woman with a gun, as she literally flashed the weapon at them as a sort of warning. In the numerous calls that the sheriff’s office received from her between January 2021 and June 2023, what remained constant every time was the police finding the neighbors’ accounts to be more truthful while the complainant seemed to be just an obnoxious and hateful woman. 

To put it simply, Susan Lorincz hated her neighbors and found the children intolerable, for reasons that are discussed later in the article. She felt that her social privilege would allow her to get away with certain things and so had chosen to go on a crusade against the children for being ‘too loud’ and ‘vile’ in her opinion. The neighbors’ and even the police officers’ considerate view that it was better that the children were playing football on a field in their neighborhood instead of getting involved in violent crimes was completely lost on her. She did not want to accommodate the healthy upbringing of the kids, as she was getting disturbed by it, and so she wanted all of it to end.

What happened on the night of 2nd June, 2023?

All the previous incidents ultimately seemed like very insignificant but crucial matters that had led to something almost unbelievable on the night of 2nd June, 2023. So far, it had always been Susan who had called the police on her neighbors, and in hindsight, it seems like the neighbors should have really returned the favor and taken some action against the deranged woman who was arguably not fit to live in normal society, but it was all too late by the time the neighbors called the police for the first time, on 2nd June. They reported a gunshot and that a woman had been severely injured. Upon arrival, the police found Ajike Owens to be the victim, and she was rushed to the hospital but was pronounced dead some time later.

A few hours earlier, Ajike’s son, Isaac, had left his tablet on the field and had gone back to retrieve it along with his brother, Israel. They were harassed by Susan, who did not want them near her house and seemingly felt threatened by them. She then picked up a roller skate from the field, which belonged to the kids, and threw it at them. This was when the kids informed their mother, Ajike, about what had happened, and she was naturally infuriated. Ajike went over to Susan’s house for an angry confrontation and banged on her door several times, demanding that she come out and explain herself for having tried to hurt her children. All this felt too threatening to Susan, who believed that Ajike would kill her, and so, in self-defense, she had picked up her handgun and fired it through the locked front door. The single shot was enough to hit Ajike in the chest and kill her, leaving her four children without a mother for the simple act of trying to stand up for them.

Did Susan lie to the police?

The fact that Susan Lorincz was a liar had been proved in other circumstances as well, particularly on the night of March 14th, 2023, when the police received a call from the owner of what seems like a car shed and garage. The man claimed that a woman, who had seemingly gotten locked inside the private property, had violently rammed her vehicle into the metal gates instead of simply calling him and getting the situation sorted. He wanted monetary compensation for the damage caused, or else he would press charges against her. As the police checked the vehicle details, they realized it was the very same Susan Lorincz, and once the officer started questioning her at her house, she kept lying to claim innocence until she realized that it was all too late and then came out with the truth. 

Susan turned out to be a cowardly liar in the end, one who would keep altering her story until she realized that none of it was working, and she would then go on to tell the truth. Even during the initial interrogation on the night of the murder and then an interrogation session a few days later, she tried to wiggle her way out of trouble with the law. During the first interrogation, she had stated that when the kids had told her that they were going to call their mom, she remained undeterred and even asked them to do so, since she wanted to talk with an adult and not children. But a few days later, when her claim made it seem like she had somewhat incited Ajike to come and face her, Susan instantly denied saying anything like this and stated that no such conversation had taken place.

A crucial piece of evidence turned out to be the records of the 911 calls that Susan herself had placed on the night of the murder. In the first call, she had told the police that an angry altercation had taken place with the kids in her neighborhood and she feared that her life was in danger. In the second call, she had reported to the police how she had already shot Ajike through her front door and how it had been an act of self-defense. When asked by the police during the interrogation about the timing of these two calls, Susan stated that at least 10 minutes had passed between the time of her first call and Ajike coming to her front door. She seemingly tried to claim that the situation had calmed down, and then Ajike had suddenly come to her house demanding answers angrily, which shocked and scared Susan to the point of shooting at her door. 

However, as per the police records, the two calls had been made in a span of less than 2 minutes, making it evident that Susan had acted more out of rage because of the altercation with the kids than any considerable feeling of fear. When confronted with this evidence, Susan kept claiming that it had felt like 10 minutes had passed in her head, and never did she come clean about the real timings. Either the intense incidents had genuinely shocked her enough to lose track of time, or she tried her best to make it seem like she had been so shaken by the incident that she could not remember the exact timings. But her attempts were simply no good, and Susan Lorincz was ultimately charged with the murder of Ajike Owens a few days later.

What is the Stand Your Ground law?

The tragic death of Ajike Owens once again brought back questions of the necessity or the legitimacy of the Stand Your Ground law, which has arguably led to more crimes being committed than people protected, at least in recent times. Stand Your Ground is a special law in Florida that allows citizens to use deadly force in order to defend themselves when they believe that it is reasonable and necessary to use such force while defending against a violent crime. The law is especially applicable for situations in which homeowners are attacked inside their personal property, and they are allowed to use any force, including firearms, to protect themselves against such attacks. While it allows citizens to essentially take the responsibility of their defense into their own hands, instead of waiting for any lawmen to do it for them, it also blurs the line between self-defense and violent attack itself.

The law essentially gives citizens the right to decide what they should consider brutal and violent enough to warrant the use of deadly force, which is bound to create a lot of confusion, if not misuse. There have been numerous people who felt that the attack against them was violent enough for them to kill their attacker, while it was simply not serious enough as per the standards of the law, making the ‘defendant’ turn into a perpetrator. Susan Lorincz’s lawyers had argued the same in her case as well, stating that she was only trying to defend herself against Ajike, whom she believed to be a violent attacker. But in more cases than not, the Stand Your Ground law has also become intricately linked with racism, with white people attacking and killing Black folks and then using the law to defend themselves. 

The documentary reports that the controversial Stand Your Ground law has been linked to an 8-11% increase in homicide each year, leading to about 700 extra deaths. Among these cases, it is mostly white Americans who make use of the law during their defense when they end up committing hate crimes, and numerous murderers even find success in such cases as well. Especially because of the strained racial dynamics in the USA in recent times, the Stand Your Ground law has become more of an excuse for racist bigots to commit crimes and get away with it.

Was the crime really racially motivated?

The Susan Lorincz case had two major elements to it, the first being the twisted perception of the Stand Your Ground law that the perpetrator had in her mind, which made her feel that she was justified in using firearms to defend against a supposed intruder in her house. The second was blatant racism, with Susan clearly hating her neighbors, and even the children, only because they were Black. Her repeated complaints about them being too rude and threatening to her, and her fears of being harmed by them, simply after seeing the kids around her house after dark, reeked of racist beliefs. In one of the interrogation sessions, she admitted to using the N-word during altercations with the children and then went on to state that she had grown up learning that the word was used to refer to anyone dirty, miserable, and intolerable, and so she did not need too much provocation to use it. 

Susan did little to hide her racist beliefs and thoughts, although The Perfect Neighbor does not present them as blatantly and lets us form our own opinions instead. She did not like anything about her Black neighbors, or even the white neighbors who supported the others and lived in harmony at the place. Her social and racial privilege made her feel that she could get away with just about anything, especially in a racially problematic state like Florida, ranging from calling the cops on children to simply shooting her neighbor only because she felt threatened. There can be no doubt whatsoever that Susan’s crime had definitely been racially motivated, and race had been the predominant factor in the multi-year trouble that she had caused her neighbors.

Where are the Owens family and Susan Lorincz now?

During the trial, Susan Lorincz and her defense team tried to explain that she had acted in self-defense and there was no premeditation in her crime. They brought on a psychological expert to evaluate Susan as well, after her sister testified in court how they had been victims of abuse during their childhood, which had left the woman shaken for life. The expert did present Susan as a patient of PTSD in their report, and the defense continued claiming that she had had no other option but to shoot Ajike Owens, as she felt that the latter would have killed her otherwise. However, none of these efforts came to any use, as the presiding judge ruled that Susan’s tragic experiences as a child could not be considered a mitigating factor for her crime as a 58-year-old woman. Ultimately, the six-person jury in the court trial found her guilty of manslaughter.

The perpetrator was sentenced to 25 years in prison, instead of the full 30 years, which is the longest possible sentence in cases of manslaughter, because of her lack of a criminal record. Susan Lorincz has been incarcerated at Homestead Correctional Facility in Florida since November of 2024, and she will be more than 80 years old by the time her sentence is over. Meanwhile, the Owens family, particularly Ajike’s children, have had a tough time dealing with the loss of the 35-year-old woman. Her sons, Isaac and Israel, felt, for the longest time, that they had gotten their mother involved in the dangerous situation and then failed to protect her. With time and the love of their family, the boys have accepted their fate, and the Owens family continues to live in their home in the neighborhood of Ocala, Florida. Some of Ajike’s family members still actively participate in activism against the Stand Your Ground law and demand an end to the ‘shoot first, talk later’ attitude prevalent in Florida, especially among white people. 

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