The Perfect Neighbor depicts the heartbreaking story of a death in a Florida neighborhood.
The Netflix documentary uses body camera footage to show how Susan Lorincz, an older White woman, fatally shot her Black neighbor, Ajike “AJ” Shantrell Owens, a 35-year-old single mother of four.
The incidents began in early 2021, when Lorincz called the police half a dozen times to complain about Owens’ children. She claimed they were trespassing on her land, despite the fact that kids were playing on a privately held field that neighbors had access to. Tensions rose in the months that followed, and Lorincz started filming her neighbor’s children, threatening to beat them and using racist slurs.
Owens walked across the street to Lorincz’s house on June 2, 2023, following a disagreement with one of her four children. Lorincz then shot Owens through the barred door, saying officers she was afraid for her life. Finally, on August 16, 2024, she was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Here’s everything you need to know about where The Perfect Neighbor took place.
Where did “The Perfect Neighbor” take place?
The Perfect Neighbor takes place in Ocala, Florida, which is part of Marion County.
Lorincz and Owens lived across the street from one other in Quail Run, a neighborhood populated by young, working-class families, according to the New Yorker. Lorincz was then living alone in a leased house on the block.
How did Marion County respond to the shooting?
Marion County police officers spent several days investigating the shooting. Dozens of people protested the lack of an arrest in the days following the incident, according to news footage seen in the documentary.
Five days after the shooting, on June 7, 2023, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office issued an official update via video statement, reporting Lorincz’s arrest and responding to the criticism.
“Many of you were wondering why there wasn’t an immediate arrest,” Sheriff Billy Woods stated. “Sometimes when we do these investigations of cases of this level, rushing in to make an arrest is not the right thing to do sometimes.”
He continued: “In fact, it could probably cause complications or errors, because we want to ensure what we present, that justice is served all the way through the courts and that the individual gets what they deserve.”
Owens’ mother, Pamela Dias, prepared her daughter’s burial service, which took place on June 12, 2023. Rev. Al Sharpton delivered a eulogy, addressing Owens’ children directly.
“Too often in our communities — often in the Black community — all we can depend on is our mothers,” he told me. “Don’t feel guilty for nothing. Your mother made the decision to put herself in risk to protect you. She chose you over herself. “That is what mothers do.”
Dias has subsequently cofounded the Standing in the Gap Fund, an organization dedicated to financially supporting families affected by racist violence. The organization also advocates for legislative change, particularly on Stand Your Ground laws, which Lorincz invoked in her defense.
What is Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law?
According to the charity organization Brady: United Against Gun Violence, Stand Your Ground laws allow anybody who believes their life is in danger to use lethal force on any perceived threat and eliminates the need to retreat in a public location.
According to The New York Times, the first one was passed in Florida in 2005 and empowers people to use weapons or other lethal force to defend themselves in public areas without first attempting to flee.
Lorincz admitted to knowing about Florida’s Stand Your Ground law but denied consciously researching it prior to the incident, according to evidence from the documentary.
As stated at the end of the program, Stand Your Ground legislation have been connected to an 8% to 11% increase in homicide rates, which equates to around 700 additional deaths per year.
How was The Perfect Neighbor filmed?
The documentary is almost entirely told through police body camera and security footage, depicting the series of incidents that finally led to Owens’ death. The clips were made available under the Freedom of Information Act.
According to The Guardian, Owens’ mother’s lawyer utilized the rule to get footage from police body cameras, surveillance cameras, cell phones, and audio recordings of Lorincz’s phone calls. When filming the video, director Geeta Gandbhir told the publication that she knew the public wouldn’t “doubt its authenticity” if they used actual footage.
“There was no reporter on the ground with bias,” the director stated. “Right now, there is a lot of uncertainty regarding the legitimacy of items. I assumed that people would believe what they saw as it happened.”
She went on to argue that police body camera footage for people of color is frequently viewed as a “violent tool,” allowing cops to “come into our communities” and use it to “criminalize and dehumanize us, to justify violence they may perpetrate against the community.”
However, with The Perfect Neighbor, they wished to “take this footage and flip it on its head.”
Meanwhile, Tameka Robinson, who collaborated on the film with Gandbhir and whose sister was Owens’ best friend, told PEOPLE in October 2025 that the body cam footage helped paint a complete picture of what occurred.
“For me, as a Black woman, it vindicates A.J. for knocking on the door in defense of her child,” she explained. “Often, we only see what happens afterward. However, because this film is shot objectively from police body cam footage, the events leading up to this are incontrovertible.
