(OCALA, Fla.) — The Marion County Sheriff’s Office released video of detectives questioning Susan Lorincz, the Florida woman charged in the fatal shooting of Ajike “AJ” Owens, a Black mother of four who lived across the street from Lorincz.
The video, released on Monday, showed the moment Lorincz, who is white, was arrested after an almost two-hour long interrogation four days after the fatal incident. Following the shooting, Lorincz told detectives she was acting in self-defense when she shot Owens, who was with her 10-year-old son, through the closed door of Lorincz’s home on June 2, 2023, according to the video.
“She was saying ‘I’m going to kill you,'” Lorincz told detectives about Owens during the interrogation.
“There was banging. There was yelling. I thought she was going to just break down the door,” she said. “My heart was pounding and I thought, ‘she’s really going to kill me.'”
According to detectives, no other witnesses heard Owens shouting threats during the dispute. “No one that we’ve interviewed so far has made any statements about her saying that she wanted to kill you,” one of the detectives told Lorincz.
Lorincz was charged with first-degree manslaughter in Owens’ death and a trial is expected to begin on August 12. She pleaded not guilty and remains in custody.
On the night of the incident, Lorincz called 911 at 8:54 pm to report Owens’ kids trespassing on her property in Ocala, Florida, according to records obtained by detectives. After approximately five minutes on the phone, the 911 dispatcher informed Lorincz that deputies were on their way.
At 9:01 pm, less than two minutes after hanging up with 911 dispatchers, Lorincz called again to say she had shot Owens, according to police records.
Police said Owens had gone to Lorincz’s home to speak with her about the dispute involving Owens’ children playing near her home.
Detectives later questioned Lorincz about her online search history, according to the video of the interrogation, asking her if she’d looked up self-defense laws in Florida. She told detectives she’d done so earlier that day after seeing an article on Facebook.
“I know what you’re thinking. Did I look up the law so that I could do something? No,” Lorincz told detectives in the video.
During the interrogation, Lorincz told detectives she’d only communicated with Owens about two or three times since the mother of four moved across the street and repeatedly denied ever using racial slurs towards Owens and her children on the night of the shooting.
Body camera footage released last July by the Marion County Sheriff’s Office showed seven incidents between Feb. 25, 2022, and April 25, 2023, in which Lorincz called sheriff’s deputies to complain about neighborhood children, including Owens’ children, playing near her home.
The body camera videos show a child alleging in comments to sheriff’s deputies that Lorincz called the children in the neighborhood racial slurs and another who accused Lorincz of being “racist.” Lorincz admitted to calling children in the neighborhood racial slurs and other derogatory terms in the past, according to a police report.
“I feel that there was a level of fear,” one of the detectives told Lorincz about the night of the shooting. “But from everything I’ve seen, it doesn’t rise to the level for you to justify shooting through a closed door with a firearm, and I think you know that wasn’t reasonable.”
“But there were times I called and deputies never showed up,” Lorincz responded. The detective responded by saying, “it was two minutes” and she said, “to me, it wasn’t two minutes.”
“I’m not taking away how you were treated,” the detective told Lorincz. “But those are children nonetheless, and now they don’t have a mother to go home to and I think you know what you did was wrong and I think you know there were already deputies on the way.”
Lorincz initially refused arrest after detectives brought in a Marion County deputy to transport her to jail, the video showed. After repeated attempts to persuade her to cooperate, she told detectives, “I don’t care. Kill me,” the video shows.
Before Lorincz was arrested, detectives gave her an opportunity to write a letter to Owens’ children, according to the video.
“I am so sorry for your loss. I never meant to kill your mother. I was terrified your mom was going to kill me. I shot out of fear,” Lorincz wrote, according to detectives in the video.
Attorneys for Lorincz and Owens’ family did not immediately respond to ABC News’ requests for comment.
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