A White Florida woman was convicted Friday of manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a Black neighbor amid an ongoing dispute about children playing loudly outside her home.
An all-White jury in Ocala, Florida, found 60-year-old Susan Lorincz guilty after 2 1/2 hours of deliberation. Lorincz faces up to 30 years in prison at sentencing.
Lorincz had claimed self-defense when she fired a single shot with a .380-caliber handgun through her front door on June 2, 2023, killing 35-year-old Ajike “A.J.” Owens. Lorincz told detectives in a videotaped interview that she feared for her life as Owens yelled and pounded on her door.
“I panicked and I thought, ‘Oh my God, she’s really going to kill me this time,’ you know,” Lorincz told Marion County Sheriff’s investigators. “And so I don’t even actually remember picking up the gun, I just remember shooting.”
The confrontation came amid a dispute between Lorincz and Owens over the latter’s children playing in a grassy area near both of their houses. Lorincz said in the interview she had been harassed for most of the three years she lived in the neighborhood.