4 Surprising Details The Perfect Neighbor Left Out About AJ Owens’ Tragic Murder  By Christopher Rudolph

The Perfect Neighbor is the harrowing new Netflix documentary primarily using police body camera footage and security camera footage to tell the story of the death of Ajike “AJ” Shantrell Owens, who was shot and killed by her neighbor, Susan Lorincz, on June 2, 2023.

Through intense footage, The Perfect Neighbor depicts the escalating incidents that ultimately led to Owens’ death. In August 2024, Lorincz was convicted of manslaughter, and in November 2024, she was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

“This shocking crime left my family and me engulfed in grief and confusion,” filmmaker Geeta Gandbhir told Tudum in October 2025. “Ajike’s community was tight-knit, rooted in mutual support and trust. It was heartbreaking to witness how such a close environment could unravel so catastrophically.”

The footage and audio recordings give viewers unprecedented access, but some facts about Owens and Lorincz didn’t make it into the documentary.

Here are four jaw-dropping details The Perfect Neighbor didn’t include.

Owens was a devoted mom who enjoyed football

The Perfect Neighbor examines Owens’s death, but the documentary does not cover details about her life. She was a working mother of four children: Isaac, Afrika, Titus and Israel.

In the documentary, Owens is mentioned as the manager of a McDonald’s. According to the Ocala Gazette, the fast-food restaurant was located on Highway 326 in Florida. When she wasn’t at work, she was a devoted mom who enjoyed throwing a ball around.

“She was amazing. She was a great mother to her kids. She always went to work and came straight home to her kids,” Owens’ neighbor, Phyllis Wills, said on MSNBC’s The ReidOut in June 2023. “When she came outside with her children, she would throw football with not only her kids, but all of the kids.”

“She encouraged my son to sign up for football, and I couldn’t take him because I’m working, so she went and signed him up herself and took him to football practice and all that stuff,” Wills recalled.

The Freedom of Information Act was used to obtain the police body cam footage

The Perfect Neighbor is a documentary that is told almost entirely using police body camera footage.

According to The Guardian, the lawyers for Owens’ mother, Pamela Dias, used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the trove of footage from police body cameras, security cameras, cell phones and audio of phone calls made by Lorincz.

“I felt the public would never doubt its authenticity. There was no reporter on the ground with bias. Right now, there is a lot of doubt about the authenticity of things. I believed that people would trust what they were seeing as it unfolded,” filmmaker Gandbhir told The Guardian about using the footage.

“Also, police body camera footage for people of color like myself, for Black and brown folks, oftentimes is seen as a violent tool,” she continued. “The police come into our communities and, afterwards, they use body camera footage to criminalize and dehumanize us, to justify violence they may perpetrate against the community.”

Gandbhir added that they wanted to “take this footage and flip it on its head.”

Owens’ family sued Lorincz for wrongful death in July 2025

The Perfect Neighbor ends with Lorincz being found guilty of manslaughter.

In July 2025, more than two years after her death, Owens’ family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Lorincz in Marion County, Fla.

According to WCJB News, the complaint was filed on June 1, individually against Lorincz and Charles Gabbard, the landlord of the house where the shooting occurred. It was reported that Owens’ family is “seeking at least $50,000 in damages.”

“The past two years have been the hardest, toughest journey I’ve ever been on,” Dias said in June 2025, per WFTV News. “It’s been filled with grief, sadness, despair.”

The case is ongoing.

The Standing in the Gap Fund was created in honor of Owens

In November 2024, Dias and Owens’ friend, Takema Robinson, announced the creation of Standing in the Gap Fund, in honor of Owens, per Fox 35 Orlando.

According to its website, Standing in the Gap Fund was founded “to support families like AJ’s who are suffering from loss and unsure of how to navigate the aftermath.” Standing in the Gap has a fundraising goal of over $3.5 million by 2030.

The fund will also “go toward advocating for legislation to repeal Florida’s Stand Your Ground law,” which Lorincz’s legal team invoked in her defense,” as Al Sharpton said on a December 2024 episode of PoliticsNation, with Dias as a guest.

“It’s an archaic law, and I feel many racist people stand behind that law in terms of shooting people of color,” Dias told Sharpton during her appearance. “There are studies out there that show that to be true. In this case, Susan invoked her standing the ground law, and it took four days for an arrest, when clearly that wasn’t the issue.”

“My daughter … was not a threat,” she added. “So again, this is just a tool, a weapon, to justify unnecessary killings, and unfortunately, it is people of color who are affected by this law.”