A white woman who fatally shot her black neighbor through a door could face manslaughter in Florida

A white woman from Florida who he fatally shot his black neighbor through her front door during an ongoing dispute over a neighbor’s noisy children, she faces a manslaughter conviction on Monday.

Susan Lorincz, 60, was convicted in August of killing 35-year-old Ajike “AJ” Owens with a single shot from her .380-caliber handgun in June 2023. Lorincz faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in state prison due to use of a firearm.

The shooting was the culmination of a long-running dispute between two neighbors over Owens’ children playing in a grassy area at each of their homes in Ocala, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northwest of Orlando.

Prosecutors said Owens got here to Lorincz’s home after her children complained that she had thrown roller skates and an umbrella at them, which Lorincz denied. Testimony at trial showed that Owens, a mother of 4 young children, banged on Lorincz’s door and screamed, leading Lorincz to take care of that he acted in self-defense and shot his neighbor.

Lorincz told detectives this in a videotaped interview she feared for her life. She also said she was bullied for many of the three years she lived in the neighborhood.

“I thought I was in immediate danger,” she said.

However, the judges disagreed with her self-defense claims.

Owens’ family pushed for the utmost prison sentence after Lorincz was convicted by an all-white jury.

“While we are pained by the loss of Ajike, we hope that justice will prevail and that the court will give Susan Lorincz the maximum sentence for her actions,” Owens’ mother, Pamela Dias, said in an emailed statement ahead of Monday’s sentencing. “Ajike’s legacy will live on through her children, and we will continue to fight for justice.”

Lorincz’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Amanda Sizemore, had argued for a lighter sentence – an unspecified sentence of lower than 11.5 years in prison, which is the minimum for her crime under state guidelines. Sizemore said in court documents that there are several reasons to justify the downward departure, including a mental disorder, and claims that Owens was the aggressor and was under “extreme duress” throughout the confrontation.

There were protests in Ocala’s Black community that prosecutors had been waiting for for weeks accuse Lorincz of unintentional manslaughterwhich is lower than second-degree murder, which carries a potential sentence of life in prison. Marion County, which incorporates Ocala, is about 12% black, in accordance with census data.