The white woman charged with fatally shooting a black mother of four last week after hurling racial slurs at her children has been granted bond.
Susan Louise Lorincz, 58, was given a bond of $150,000 by Marion County Circuit Judge Robert Hodges, the Ocala Star-Banner reported Friday June 9.
Lorincz is charged with manslaughter with a firearm, culpable negligence, and two counts of assault and battery stemming from the death of her neighbor, Ajike “AJ” Owens, 25, who was fatally shot through the front door of Lorincz’s home on June 2.
If she posts bond, Lorincz is barred from contacting Owens’ family, cannot possess firearms, and will need to surrender her passport and submit to ankle monitoring at all times, the Star-Banner said.
Owens’ killing was the tragic end to what investigators say was a two-year fight between the two women over where the victim’s four children played in the neighborhood.
Lorincz, who is white, allegedly gave Owens’ young children the middle finger on the night of the shooting and told one of them, “Get away from my house, you black slave,” police revealed on Thursday.
She also reportedly hit one of the children with a roller skate, the sheriff said previously.
Owens was then shot in the chest when she went to confront Lorincz about the incident, accompanied by one of her sons.’
Owens’ mother, Pamela Dias, said Wednesday Owens’ 9-year-old was by her side when the shooting occurred.
She also said that the children – who range from 3 to 12 years old – had started to blame themselves for their mother’s death.”
“In his soul and his heart, it’s his fault that his older brother, his baby sister, and his baby brother, as well as himself, will never see their mother again, because he went home and told his mother what this woman did to him,” Dias explained.
“[The 12-year-old] told me ‘I couldn’t save her. I tried to give her CPR,’” she added.
Lorincz, who claimed the shooting was in self-defense, was arrested on Tuesday – four days after the incident.
She appeared in court Thursday wearing a “suicide vest.” She was initially denied bond on the grounds that the state may be filing a motion for pre-trial detention, the Star-Banner reported.
At her bond hearing on Friday morning, Lorincz told the judge she had been living in Marion County for 15 years, and promised to return to court as needed, the outlet said.
Lorincz – who is single and does not have children, is currently being evicted from the home where the shooting took place. She told Assistant State Attorneys Rich Buxman on Friday that she was aware of these proceedings.
Earlier this week, national civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing Owens’ family, called on prosecutors to upgrade Lorincz’s manslaughter charge to murder.
“We want [the state attorney] to zealously prosecute the killer of AJ Owens, just like he would do if the roles had been reversed and a black woman had shot a white woman in front of her children through a locked metal door,” Crump, who famously represented the family of Trayvon Martin in 2012, said on Wednesday.
Lauren Smith, who lives across the street from where the shooting took place, told the Associated Press that Lorincz was “angry all the time” at the children playing.
“She would say nasty things to them. Just nasty,” she recalled, adding that Lorincz’s self-defense claim was “outrageous.”
