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heyOn the morning of Friday, June 2, 2023, Ajike Owens did something very ordinary – he knocked on his neighbor’s door. His son came home and told that a 58-year-old woman living nearby told him the name susan lorinzHad yelled at his younger brother and thrown things at him for playing in their shared grass area. Owens, a mother of four, drove across the street to talk to Lorincz and find out what happened. But without answering his call, Lorincz shoots Owens through his front door, leaving him die on the roadShe was only 35 years old.
This sounds like murder. But this is also America, where “Stand Your Ground” is the law Applicable in more than half of the US statesAnd that includes Florida, where Owens and Lorincz lived in the city of Ocala. The law says people can use deadly force when they feel justified in using deadly force to prevent certain violent crimes or in self-defense. Lorincz said she believed Owens came to her house that night to kill her. “I don’t even remember actually picking up the gun,” he told the investigating officers After that. “I just remember shooting.”
It took Loring several days will even be arrestedAt the time, the Owens community worked to raise awareness of the injustice through placards and press interviews. These included film director Geeta Gandhi, who watched the film for two days. 30 hours of police bodycam footage Obtained through a freedom of information request to try and understand the frustrating two years of events leading up to Owens’ death. She knew what she saw could inspire change, and she reached out to Owens’ mother, Pam, to ask if she could make a documentary.
the result is perfect neighborA harrowing 97-minute film, Gandhir won the directing award for US documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It is already being seen as a leading contender at next year’s Academy Awards. “I wanted to share the pain and the tragedy,” Owen’s mother says of her courageous decision to share the story of her daughter’s death with the world. “I wanted the world to see what Stand Your Ground laws can do. What guns in the wrong hands can do. What racial violence looks like.”
Suzanne Lorincz was an outsider in her small Ocala community. It was a street where families felt welcome and trusted those living nearby to take care of their sons and daughters as if they were their own. “They were loving. They were taking care of each other. The children felt safe,” says Gandbhir. But Lorincz threatened that communal sense of safety and trust. In the 12 months before Owens’ shooting, Lorincz called 911 about a dozen times to report her neighbor’s children — 11-year-old girls with rollerskates, little boys playing basketball — trespassing in the communal area outside her home.
The footage from the night of Owen’s death is disturbing. Her son, who was standing nearby and watching his mother get shot, can be seen running back into the street crying and screaming for help. In police bodycam footage, we hear Pam crying on the phone as she is given the news that her daughter has died. “There are no words to explain,” she says today. “When I got that call, I was in shock, even after that…” Pam fell silent. “We used to talk almost every day. There were times when I would pick up the phone to send him a message or call him and then…” she expresses happiness, looking at her hands as tears well up in her eyes. “When the movie came out and I saw my daughter in that state… I think that’s when reality set in.”
“What the community had to go through was something like a horror movie,” reflects Gandbheer. “Susan was dangerous. But the police dismissed her. They came back again and again, and said, ‘Oh, we’ve dealt with this before – they just saw her as a nuisance. A repeat caller. She really was a threat. But she weaponized her race and privilege against the community.’ Lorincz, a white woman, used hate speech against children and reportedly brandished a gun before the fatal shooting of Owens in 2023. Yet, the police never warned him against misusing their services or harassing neighboring families. “They just tolerated her,” says Gandbheer. “They failed. And they didn’t protect Suzanne. It was the worst outcome for everyone.”
When Lorincz was finally arrested a few days later, the police treated him with immense patience. In a scene involving perfect neighborOfficers told Lorincz, who was sitting in custody, that she had been charged with murder – but she refused to get up from her chair in the interview room and walk towards the prison. “I just can’t,” she repeatedly tells the three officers. They wait for minutes and minutes – never using force, never becoming aggressive or harsh. “If she had been a person of color, they would have dragged her out of the room, I have no doubt about that,” says Gandbheer. “She was a master manipulator and they didn’t know how to handle her.”
Research shows that murders with white assailants and black victims are five times more likely to be justified. In Stand Your Ground states, 45 percent of cases with one white shooter and one black victim were considered fair, while only 11 percent of cases with one were considered fair. black shooter and a white victimIn Florida, the state experienced 32 percent increase in gun murders After the Stand Your Ground law was enacted in 2005. The US Civil Rights Commission described this law as “Licence to Kill”, which allows anyone to turn minor disputes into unnecessary “fatal incidents”.
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On November 25, 2024, Lorincz was sentenced to 25 years in prison. A judge ruled that she was motivated to shoot Owens “more by anger than by fear” and that “at the moment she fired the gun through the door, she was safe”. This decision has created a stir in Gandbhir perfect neighborInserting courtroom footage below the film’s credit sequence. “I don’t want anyone to feel that justice was done by Suzanne going to jail,” the director explains. “Prison should not have been the answer. There’s no happy ending here. But we really hope people will be inspired to demand better for themselves and their community.”
Since the film premiered in January of this year, Owens’ mother says she’s heard countless stories from people who have lost a loved one in a similar incident. “I can’t tell you how many people come in and say something happened to them or something happened to a family member,” says Pam. Since his daughter’s murder, he has launched stands in the gap fund Supporting families affected by racial violence. She adds, “Unfortunately this is happening over and over again in America.” “I’m sure there will be more cases. We definitely want reform. We want people to use their voices for change.”
Gandbhir hit it at home with a hammer. “Your community is a microcosm of the larger world,” she says. “So, if we can justify killing your neighbor over a minor dispute, what else can you justify? It paves the way for war, for genocide, for our acceptance of those things. That’s how we become numb. In this movie, you see people living together, loving each other, trusting each other. Safe. While living. All that is destroyed because an outsider has access to guns and this Stand Your Ground law is encouraging him. This should never have happened.”
‘The Perfect Neighbor’ is streaming Netflix from 17th October