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A Florida woman who fatally shot her neighbor — the deadly conclusion to a years-long feud about the victim’s children playing outside — was arrested and charged late Tuesday, authorities said.
Susan Lorincz, 58, was taken into custody and charged with manslaughter in the shooting death of Ajike “AJ” Owens, Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods said in a video posted on Facebook shortly after midnight Wednesday.
The arrest came after protests were held calling for authorities to arrest the shooter in the racially charged case.
But sheriff’s officials originally were hesitant to charge Lorincz as detectives sorted out whether she acted in self-defense in accordance with the Sunshine State’s stand-your-ground laws.
“Ms. Lorincz’s fate is now in the hands of the judicial system, which I trust will deliver justice in due course,” Woods said in a statement.
“As I go to bed tonight, I will be saying a prayer for Ms. Owens’ children and the rest of her family. I’d ask all of you to do the same.”
Owens, a 35-year-old mother of four, was shot dead through her neighbor’s door in Ocala on Friday night in what Woods said in a Monday press conference was the culmination of a two-and-a-half-year feud at an apartment complex.
Owens had gone to her neighbor’s home after the woman yelled at her children as they played in a nearby lot, Woods said Monday.
The neighbor had also thrown a pair of skates that hit one of the children, the sheriff previously said.
Woods told Fox 35 that investigators had to get the full picture of what happened, including talking to the victim’s four kids, before an arrest was made.
“And we got a bigger picture, the full picture. And my detectives wanted to make sure that we closed all the loopholes, so she would not have the defense of using the ‘stand your ground’ law, and this is not ‘stand your ground,'” the sheriff told FOX 35.
“Let me make that clear — this was not ‘stand your ground.’ It was an unjustified shooting.”
Lorincz is facing a charge of manslaughter with a firearm and culpable negligence, the sheriff’s office said. The culpable negligence charge is because children were present during the commission of a crime, Woods told the station.
Lorincz is also charged with assault and battery against Owens’ kids from the earlier altercation before the shooting, the station reported.
The sheriff’s office said in the release announcing the arrest that the shooter claimed she pulled the trigger in self-defense and accused Owens of trying to break down the door.
The shooter, who is white, allegedly yelled racial slurs at Owens’ children, who are black, according to civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who is representing Owens’ family and also represented Travon Martin’s family in 2012 in a landmark fatal stand-your-ground case.
Authorities have not yet confirmed whether any slurs were said or if race was a factor in the shooting following Crump’s allegations that were made before the arrest.
Owens’ children — who range in age from 2 to 12 — were all at the scene of the shooting when deputies arrived, according to a police report obtained by WKMG.
During a dispute between Lorincz and the young kids, she threw a roller skate that hit a 10-year-old boy, the sheriff’s office said Wednesday.
When the boy and his 12-year-old brother went to her door, she allegedly opened her door and swung an umbrella at them, the sheriff’s office said.
Owens then went to confront the woman and demanded she come outside.
The mother was shot once with her 10-year-old son by her side, authorities said.
Lauren Smith, who lives across the street from where the shooting took place, was on her porch Friday and saw one of Owens’ young sons pacing, and yelling, “They shot my mama, they shot my mama,” she told the Associated Press.
Smith ran to the house and started doing chest compressions on Owens until EMTs arrived. She said there was no altercation and that the mother did not have a weapon.
The neighbor “was angry all the time that the children were playing out there,” Smith said. “She would say nasty things to them. Just nasty.”
Smith said the neighborhood is “family friendly” and the fact that the shooter is claiming self-defense is “outrageous.”
Woods said that since January 2021, deputies responded at least a half-dozen times in connection with the feuding between Owens and the shooter.
“My baby was so full of life. She was a single mother of four,” Owens’ mother, Pamela Dias, said during a news conference on Monday.
With Post wires
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