Killed For Raising Children While Black

A mother of four was shot and killed in Florida following a longtime feud with a neighbor who had complained about the victim’s children playing outside. Deputies responded to a trespassing call and found one woman suffering from a gunshot wound, Marion County, Florida, Sheriff Billy Woods said.

The victim was identified as 35-year-old Ajike “AJ” Owens. The killer, also a woman, “engaged” with Owens’ children and threw a pair of skates, hitting the children, the sheriff said. A witness told police there had been a dispute over a child’s electronic tablet device prior to the shooter throwing the skates at the children.  Following that interaction, one of the children went back inside their home and told their mother, who went to the neighbor’s home “to confront the lady,” the sheriff said. 

According to the shooter, there was “a lot of aggressiveness” from both sides, as well as threats being made, and Owens was ultimately shot through the door, the Sheriff said.   Witnesses told authorities Owens went to the shooter’s home and knocked on the door before she was shot through the closed door.  Owens was later pronounced dead at a hospital, authorities said.

The woman who fired at Owens has been cooperating with law enforcement. No arrest has been made in the case. Authorities have not named the shooter or shared any identifying information. But civil rights attorney Ben Crump, one of the attorneys representing the family, identified her as a white woman. The incident report also described the shooter as a 58-year-old white woman.

In a separate news conference held by Owens’ family attorneys, the victim’s mother said the neighbor who shot her daughter had called the family, including the children, racial slurs.  The neighbor’s door “never opened,” when Owens, who was black, tried to confront her, and she was shot through the door, Pamela Dias, the victim’s mother said.  “My daughter, my grandchildren’s mother, was shot and killed with her 9-year-old son standing next to her. She had no weapon, she posed no imminent threat to anyone,” Dias said.

“What I’m asking is for justice,” she added. “Justice for my daughter.”   Crump said the fact that there has not been an arrest in the case is “appalling.”   “It is asinine when they try to justify this unjustifiable killing of this mother of four who was killed in front of her children,” Crump said. “It is heartbreaking on every level.”