A mother of four was shot and killed in Florida during a confrontation with a neighbor she had repeatedly feuded with, local officials said.
The fatal incident occurred Friday after Ajike”AJ” Owens, 35, went with her 9-year-old son to the Ocala apartment of their neighbor, who has not been officially identified. Owens visited the home after the neighbor allegedly yelled at her kids and threw skates at them.
Owens was reportedly shot through the front door of the apartment while her son stood next to her.
“I wish our shooter would have called us instead of taking actions into her own hands,” Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods said at a news conference Monday. “[And] I wish Ms. Owens would have called us in the hopes we could have never gotten to the point at which we are here today.”
Deputies had responded to at least six incidents involving Owens and the shooter since January 2021, according to the sheriff.
Authorities have not made an arrest, and an investigation is ongoing.
“Most states don’t have the stand-your-ground law, [which Florida has],” Woods said Monday. “What a lot of people don’t understand is that law has specific instructions for us in law enforcement. Any time that we think or perceive or believe that may come into play, we cannot make an arrest. The law specifically says that. What we have to rule out is whether the deadly force was justified or not.”
The shooter claimed there was “aggressiveness from both of them, back and forth,” Wood said. Benjamin Crump, a civil rights attorney representing Owens’ family, claims the shooter used racial slurs toward Owens’ kids, who are Black.
Owens’ mother said at a vigil Monday that her daughter “posed no imminent threat to anyone.”
“My daughter, my grandchildren’s mother, was shot and killed with her 9-year-old son standing next to her,” Pamela Dias said. “She had no weapon.”