A critically acclaimed new documentary, The Perfect Neighbor, uses bodycam and CCTV footage to reconstruct the events leading to the fatal shooting of a black woman by her white neighbour in Florida. The film, directed by Geeta Gandbhir, relies on around 90% police and surveillance footage to detail the June 2023 incident, which resulted in a 25-year prison sentence for Susan Lorincz for the manslaughter of Ajike Owens.
The documentary opens with Lorincz's arrest in a Marion County police interview room, where she repeatedly refuses officers' requests to stand up and be handcuffed, saying 'No. I can't. I'm sorry.' Until that point, Lorincz had not been under arrest despite shooting Owens through a locked front door days earlier. The footage reveals that only two minutes before the shooting, Lorincz had called police over a dispute with one of Owens's children about an electronic tablet. Lorincz claimed Owens banged on her door shouting threats, prompting her to fire 'in fear for my life'. However, the judge later stated the shooting was 'more by anger than fear'.
The film includes doorbell camera audio capturing the gunshot and Owens's son screaming for 911, as well as police bodycam footage of paramedics attempting to save Owens. It also shows the children's father breaking the news to them that their mother 'isn't coming back'. Director Gandbhir, a family friend of Owens, told the BBC that the family provided around 30 hours of video, including doorbell, bodycam, and cell phone footage, as well as audio recordings of Lorincz's numerous calls to police.
The footage reveals a history of disputes dating back to February 2022, when Lorincz claimed Owens threw a 'No Trespassing' sign at her. Police were called multiple times over the following year as Lorincz complained about neighbourhood children, including Owens's kids, playing football near her house. In one call, Lorincz described herself as 'the perfect neighbour'. Local children referred to her as 'the Karen', a pejorative term for an entitled middle-aged white woman, and told officers she called them a 'jack-a'.
