Where Did The Perfect Neighbor Take Place? What to Know About the Florida Community Where Ajike 'AJ' Shantrell Owens Was Fatally Shot By Jordana Comiter

The Perfect Neighbor tells the tragic story of a death in a Florida community.

The Netflix documentary uses body camera footage to share the series of events that led up to Susan Lorincz, an elderly White woman, fatally shooting 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 with complaints about Owens’ children. She claimed they were trespassing on her property, though they were actually playing in a field that was privately owned by a man who allowed access to neighbors. Tensions escalated in the months that followed, and Lorincz began video-recording her neighbor’s children, threatening to beat them and using racial slurs.

On June 2, 2023, Owens walked across the street to Lorincz’s home after she had an altercation with one of Owens’ four children. Lorincz then shot Owens through the locked door, telling police she had feared for her life. In the end, she was found guilty of manslaughter on Aug. 16, 2024, and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Here’s everything to know about where The Perfect Neighbor took place.

Where did The Perfect Neighbor take place?

The Perfect Neighbor is set in Ocala, Fla., which is part of Marion County.

Lorincz and Owens lived across the street from each other in Quail Run, a neighborhood filled with young, working-class families, per the New Yorker. At the time, Lorincz was living alone in a rented house on the block.

How did Marion County respond to the shooting?

Marion County police officers took several days to investigate the shooting. Dozens of people protested the lack of an arrest in the days following the incident, according to news footage featured in the documentary.

Five days after the shooting, on June 7, 2023, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office released an official update via a video statement announcing Lorincz’s arrest and addressing the criticism they had faced.

“Many of you were struggling to understand why there was not an immediate arrest,” Sheriff Billy Woods said. “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.”

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He added, “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, organized a funeral service for her daughter, which took place on June 12, 2023. There, Rev. Al Sharpton gave a eulogy where he addressed Owens’ children directly.

“Too often in our communities — often in the Black community — all we can depend on is our mothers,” he said. “Don’t you feel guilty about nothing. Your mother chose to stand in danger’s way for you. She chose you over her. That’s what mothers do.”

Dias has since cofounded a nonprofit in honor of Owens called the Standing in the Gap Fund, which aims to financially support families impacted by racist violence. The group also fights for legislative change, particularly in relation to Stand Your Ground laws, which Lorincz used in her defense.

What is Florida’s Stand Your Ground law?

Stand Your Ground laws allow anyone who believes their life to be in danger to use lethal force on any perceived threat and completely remove the duty to retreat in a public space, according to nonprofit organization Brady: United Against Gun Violence.

Per The New York Times, the first one was passed in Florida in 2005 and allows people to use firearms or other deadly force to defend themselves in public places without first trying to escape.

In footage in the documentary from when Lorincz was questioned by police, she admitted to having known about Florida’s Stand Your Ground law but denied having researched it intentionally ahead of the incident.

As shared in the end of the documentary, Stand Your Ground laws have been linked to an 8% to 11% increase in homicide rates — equal to roughly 700 additional deaths annually.

How was The Perfect Neighbor filmed?

The documentary is told almost entirely using police body camera and security footage to depict the series of incidents that ultimately led to Owens’ death. The clips were made available thanks to the Freedom of Information Act.

Owens’ mother’s lawyer used the rule to obtain the footage from police body cameras, as well as security cameras, cell phones and audio of phone calls made by Lorincz, per The Guardian. When making the film, director Geeta Gandbhir told the outlet that she knew the public wouldn’t “doubt its authenticity” if they used the real footage.

“There was no reporter on the ground with bias,” the filmmaker said. “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.”

She went on to say that police body camera footage for people of color is often seen as a “violent tool,” a way for police to “come into our communities” and use it to “criminalize and dehumanize us, to justify violence they may perpetrate against the community.”

However, in The Perfect Neighbor, they wanted to “take this footage and flip it on its head.”

Meanwhile, Tameka Robinson, who worked on the film alongside Gandbhir and whose sister was Owens’ best friend, told PEOPLE in October 2025 that the body cam footage helped tell the full picture of what happened.

“For me, as a Black woman, it vindicates A.J. for knocking on the door in defense of her child,” she said. “Often, we only see what happens afterwards. But because this film is shot from the objective point of view of police body cam footage, what led up to this is irrefutable.”