“She had big dreams,” Pamela Dias says of her late daughter, Ajike Owens, a working mother of four who was raising her kids in Ocala, FL.
“She would kind of toss around different ideas, entrepreneurial ideas that she wanted to test out because she wanted better for her family,” Dias recalls. “And she’d always tell me, ‘You just wait and see. The world is going to know my name.’”
Those words proved prophetic, for reasons that break the heart. At age 35, Owens was shot and killed by her neighbor, a white woman known for harassing children of color who played in the area, including Owens’ kids. The tragic case, which would eventually make headlines across the country, is explored in the Oscar-nominated documentary The Perfect Neighbor, directed by Geeta Gandhbir.
“She manifested and the world truly does know her name and it’s through The Perfect Neighbor that this has come true,” Dias tells Deadline. “Hopefully, this will change hearts and minds for people, and her life, her death will not have been in vain.”
Gandbhir knew Owens personally.
“On the night that she was murdered [June 2, 2023], we got a call, a distress call, from our family,” Gandbhir explains in a new video released by Netflix today, which you can watch below. “We were immediately on the ground trying to support Ajike’s family in getting news coverage of the case because at that time, [the assailant] Susan Lorincz was not arrested. It took about five days for her to be arrested. And also, there was not much media coverage. The press was not paying attention. And we know from experience in cases like Ajike Owens, without media pressure and media coverage, oftentimes the cases get shoved under the rug or justice might not be served.”
Lorincz, 58 at the time of the shooting, invoked Florida’s stand your ground law in her defense, claiming she had feared for her life when Owens knocked on her door. She fired through the locked door, cutting down her neighbor.
When Gandbhir embarked on the documentary project, she thought about taking a traditional approach, which would have involved the usual kinds of talking head interviews with relevant parties reflecting on the crime. But after she gained access to police materials dating back two years before the shooting, the filmmaker realized the story could be told through those videos.
“There was Ring Camera footage, [police] dash cam footage. There were detective interviews, body camera footage. There were 911 calls,” Gandbhir notes. “It was just what the police happened to gather.”
Those videos told a story of a white woman who serially called police to complain about her neighbors and their children, and despite being told that the kids had the right to play near her house, faced no consequences for her continued antagonism.
“Essentially, Susan weaponized racism. She weaponized her privilege. She weaponized victimhood and the stand your ground laws,” Gandbhir says. “And she also had access, very easy access — because of lax gun laws in Florida — to weapons. And we see all these things culminate in this terrible murder.”
In the interview with Deadline, Owens’ mother comments, “Had Susan been a person of color, the narrative would have been completely different. If she was a person of color, she wouldn’t have received such gracious treatment from the police. You see in the film, at the end when she’s being arrested, how many times she refused [to cooperate with detectives]. Imagine that being a person of color.”
Dias adds, “Imagine a person of color abusing the 911 system. I think there would have been some type of repercussions if that had been a person of color, repeatedly, repeatedly year after year, calling the police for nothing… I don’t think the police saw Susan as a threat, and that was due to their own biases. They saw her as someone that they could relate to, maybe their own neighbor or a relative, a middle-aged white mom, but they didn’t truly see her as a threat that she really was.”
Dias says she initially feared Lorincz would never face prosecution.
“That weighed heavily on my heart as to whether or not we would even see the inside of a courtroom. We see it most notably with Trayvon Martin, how that worked out with the stand your ground law,” Dias notes. “I feared, one, because she’s a middle-aged white woman and then my daughter is African American, young, and Black women tend to have that stigma of an ‘angry Black woman.’ And I felt like that might come into play. And even when we did have the trial, I thought maybe the jurors might identify themselves with Susan. That was one of the things that the defense attorney tried to portray my daughter as this really bulky, Black, angry woman and Susan was this frail, innocent, white woman.”
In the end, Lorincz was convicted of manslaughter with a firearm and sentenced to 25 years in prison. She is incarcerated at Homestead Correctional Institution in South Florida. Pamela Dias, meanwhile, is raising her four grandchildren in the absence of their mom, Ajike.
“Losing their mother in such the violent way that they did and having to bear witness to that, it has really taken a toll on them. This is something that’s going to stay with them for the rest of their lives,” Dias says. “Their personalities, who they are, their core has been altered. They’re no longer these innocent children that their [biggest] worry is their friends. Now they’re navigating life without the sole provider, the sole source of comfort, their first love. And it’s incredibly tough on them. We often throw around that kids are resilient, but they shouldn’t have to be resilient in a case like this. But I would say they’re doing as best as they can be under the circumstances. And I admire them for persevering and getting up every day, facing the world, and they do it so graciously.”
As she raises the kids, Pamela grieves for her daughter.
“Ajika was a person with a big personality, and she loved, and she loved hard, and she loved dearly. She chose her friends very wisely, and all her friends were family,” Dias observes. “She worked hard for her family, for her children, and her life mattered.”
Watch the Netflix “Origin Story” video on the making of The Perfect Neighbor, featuring director Geeta Gandbhir:
English (US) ·