In Memory of Ajike Owens

 What I Wanted to Do Today

Today, I was going to write another post about Juneteenth.  I was looking forward to it, in fact--I had the day off, the weather was much milder than it had been in a month, and the subject is both worthy and pleasant.

But I can't write about Juneteenth today, because I have to write about Ajike Owens.

She was a Black mother of four, who lived near Ocala, Florida.  She was a manager at McDonald's and worked hard to provide for her kids.  And I'm having to use the past tense here because she's dead.

Not from natural causes, mind.  Ajike--AJ to those who knew her--is dead of a fatal gunshot wound to the chest.  The gun in question was fired by a white woman named Susan Lorincz, who was safe in her own house, but didn't like it when Ms. Owens pounded on her door to confront her about the way Lorincz had treated her kids.  Lorincz shot AJ Owens through the door!

What Happened...

It was Friday evening, and AJ's kids were playing in a field next to a quadruplex.  One unit of that 'plex was rented by Lorincz, and according to neighbors, Lorincz had a long history of harassing not only the Owens kids, but also all the other kids in that neighborhood, who all liked to play in that field.  The field was apparently a sore point with Lorincz;  she called it "her property" (she didn't own any of that complex or its land) and did everything she could to chase the neighborhood kids off of it.  She would shout racial slurs at the kids, rev the motor in her truck or blast the horn in order to intimidate them, and even wave a gun in their direction!

So:  Friday, June 2nd.  Lorincz yelled at the Owens kids to get off the field.  Eventually, they did, but one of the kids had left his iPad there, and Lorincz went out and took it.

The details get a little confused here.  In one account, when the kids went to Lorincz's apartment to get the iPad back, Lorincz threw the iPad at the kids, hitting one of them and cracking the screen.  In another account, Lorincz threw a rollerblade and hit one of the kids in the toe.  Still another account has Lorincz poking an umbrella at the kids.  At any rate, her behavior caused the Owens kids to go and get their mother to handle the situation.

Owens went over to Lorincz's apartment and began to knock, good and loud, on that door and demand that Lorincz come out.  Lorincz, for her part, called 911 and told them that Owens was "pounding" on her door, and that she was "breaking it down."  And then Lorincz fired her gun through the door, hitting Owens in the chest.  One of her sons attempted CPR on his mom, but Ajike Owens died before an ambulance could get her to the hospital.

So, the Cops Arrested the Killer.  Right?

Wrong.

The sheriff on the case hemmed and hawed about how when you get to a crime scene, sometimes you only get "one side of the story."  He emphasized a "long-running feud" between Owens and Lorincz, as if that somehow explained how an armed white woman shoots an unarmed Black mom through a closed door.  He didn't want to interview the Owens kids right away because he thought they might not want to talk to officers; he was waiting for "trained counselors" (or some such bullshit term) to talk to the kids.  Oh, and they were also trying to determine if Florida's "stand your ground" laws were applicable. 

Dear God.  An unarmed Black woman is dead, and the cops are wondering if the armed white woman who did the shooting is protected by a stupid law that wouldn't even fly in the so-called "wild" West, where many towns required you to check your shootin' irons at the local sheriff's office.

But the Owens family were not about to take this in silence.  They hired attorney Ben Crump to represent them, and they got the word out about AJ and how she died.  As awareness grew, pressure on the local law did, too, and they finally arrested Susan Lorincz on Tuesday, June 6th--which also happens to be the anniversary of D-Day.  Rather appropriate.  By Friday, she had been charged with manslaughter, culpable negligence, two counts of simple assault, and battery;  her bond was set at $154,000.

Lorincz has pleaded "not guilty" and claims that the Owens kids--ranging in age from 3 to 12--had threatened to kill her, which I find laughable considering who had the guns (turns out Lorincz had a second gun in the house) and who did the actual killing.

The Thing I'm Really Afraid Of...

...is that Susan Lorincz will walk free.

Florida is a bad state for justice of any kind if you are a Black person.  Trayvon Martin's killer is free to this day, and it's looking like the only judgement he will ever face is when he dies and stands before God.

Lorincz has "outed" herself as a racist;  by her own admission, she called the Black children in her neighborhood the n-word and also "Black slave."  She was "afraid" that Ajike Owens was going to break in her door and kill her.  But her fears were imaginary.  Like so many white people, she looked at the color of her neighbors'--and their children's--skins and assumed them to be troublemakers and killers.  So she became a killer herself.

But will a jury see it that way?  I have my doubts.  Because Lorincz's lawyer will be damned sure to pile on as much victim-blaming as he can, and will dig up any dirt he can on AJ's character, work habits, parenting...anything to smear that good mother's reputation and make poor Susan look like the brave old lady protecting herself from a female Black thug.

Nevertheless, I pray that truth and justice will prevail.  The state of Florida owes that to both the family and the memory of Ajike Owens.