A Florida woman who fatally shot her Black neighbor through her front door will walk free because of the state’s “stand your ground” law—at least for now.
The unnamed shooter killed her neighbor, Ajike Owens, a 35-year-old mother of four, as Owens stood in front of the shooter’s door with her 9-year-old son beside her last Friday, June 2. Owens was reportedly confronting the neighbor over a dispute that began with Owens’ children playing in a nearby field.
The slaying capped what authorities described as long-running animosity between the two neighbors that had resulted in multiple calls to police. The unnamed shooter had called Owens’ kids racial slurs in the past, neighbors and relatives said.
ADVERTISEMENT
“This has basically been a neighborhood feud over time,” Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods said in a press conference. “I’ve got reports that they’ve called, one side or the other—either the mother, Ms. Owens, has called, or the shooter has called, complaining about the children.”
Neighbors told local station WFTV that the fatal confrontation was sparked by Owens’ children playing in a field next to the shooter’s house in Ocala, drawing her anger. The kids left an iPad behind and later returned to fetch it but the shooter had taken it, the station reported, citing neighbors. Sheriff Woods said the neighbor then threw a pair of skates at the kids, hitting one of Owens’ children.
Owens’ mother, Pamela Dias, said her daughter went over to the neighbor’s house and knocked on the door, according to TV station WESH.
“She had no weapon,” Dias said. “She posed no imminent threat to anyone.”
According to family, Owens knocked on the door once and yelled “I know you’re in there” before the neighbor fired shots. The shooter has allegedly countered to authorities that Owens was banging on doors and yelling.
Woods said that deputies responded to a trespassing call when they found Owens had been shot. She later died of her wounds at the hospital.
The lawyer representing Owens’ family, high-profile civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, said in a statement that the shooter was a white woman who had hurled racial slurs at Owens’ children before the argument that left Owens dead.
After the shocking shooting, Owens’ children ran to a neighbor’s house asking for help. That neighbor, Ashley Remy, told WFTV that the alleged shooter was a constant antagonist.
“She’ll come out and just yell at [Owens’ children], call them names, call the police. All of us have talked to the police about her attitude toward the children,” Remy said.
Dias said that the shooter had “harassed the children in the neighborhood," including Owens’ kids: “She called them racial slurs: the N-word, slaves.”
Despite public outcry, police haven’t arrested or identified the shooter because of Florida’s stand your ground law, which requires police to rule out that the killing was in self-defense before making an arrest.
“Any time that we think or perceive or believe that that might come into play, we cannot make an arrest,” Woods said. “Sometimes it becomes an obstacle, but only a temporary obstacle, because it will be moved, and the final answer will come forward.”
Woods asked for patience as the investigation progresses. He said authorities still need to interview key witnesses in the killing—Owens’ children—and insisted police are not “cold-hearted bastards” who would “interview children the night they possibly witnessed their mother being killed.”
Owens’ family has demanded an arrest. Dias described her daughter as a loving single mother who cared for her kids above all else.
“She loved them with all her being,” Dias said. “To know her is to know that her kids were her everything.”
Read it at Associated Press
