Deadly Neighbor

WHAT STARTED AS A DISPUTE OVER KIDS PLAYING TURNED LETHAL WHEN A WOMAN FIRED A GUN THROUGH A DOOR AND KILLED A MOTHER OF FOUR

- K.C. BAKER

Ajike Owens showed up to every one of her children’s sports practices, volunteered in their classrooms and made time to cook a family meal every night for her boys Isaac, 14, Israel (known as Izzy), 12, and Titus, 6, and daughter Afrika, 9. “She was the football mom and a cheer team mom too,” says Owens’s mother, Pamela Dias, 56. “How she did it, I don’t know, but she was very hands-on.”

Like other devoted parents, 35-year-old Owens—whom everyone called A.J.—was also protective of her children. As a result, she grew increasingly concerned when their neighbor Susan Lorincz, who lived alone in a rental property across the street from Owens’s home in Ocala, Fla., began complaining about the noise the kids made as they played on a field on her side of the street. Beginning in early 2021, Lorincz, 61, called the police half a dozen times about the children, claiming that they were trespassing—although the field was privately owned by a man who allowed access to neighbors—and, on one occasion, “scream[ing] like idiots.”