OCALA, Fla. — Prosecutors ended their case against Susan Lorincz Wednesday with a bold flourish: by largely relying on Lorincz’s own words as she was interrogated by deputies in the days following the shooting.
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For several hours, jurors watched detectives turn against Lorincz as she claimed fear for her life caused her to shoot Ajike Owens just two minutes after she called 911 to report Owens’ kids for trespassing.
“No one that we’ve interviewed so far said she wanted to kill you,” one detective could be heard saying.
Lorincz had told the detectives that she believed Owens was trying to break through her front door, that Owens repeatedly pounded on the door hard enough to potentially break it, and the exchange lasted upwards of 10 minutes before she decided to squeeze the trigger of her gun.
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Detectives repeatedly found faults in those statements and questioned Lorincz repeatedly about her choice to use deadly force while Owens was on the other side of a deadbolt-locked door – asking Lorincz to come outside and talk, per a recording detectives reviewed.
“I can’t get to the point where pounding on the door leads to you getting hurt or killed,” one detective said.
He also heavily questioned Lorincz’s use of the words “reasonable and prudent” to justify her actions. The detectives noted that the words were ripped straight from Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, and the interrogators insinuated that Lorincz had researched the law while preparing to speak to them.
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Prosecutors’ final witness was the man who extracted data from Lorincz’s seized cell phone, which included a series of short videos she took of the neighborhood kids playing in the hours before the shooting.
The clips, each just a few seconds, were taken a few minutes apart from one another and seemingly presented to contradict Lorincz’s earlier claims that the kids provoked her into a confrontation. The final clip was shot 30 seconds before Lorincz made her first 911 call and showed a pair of abandoned roller skates, along with an otherwise quiet street.
The defense’s launch was even rockier than the prosecution’s one day earlier. With the jury out of the room, the defense previewed their opening question to a woman who lived in the neighborhood and heard the shooting by asking the woman to describe where she lived.
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The judge disallowed her answer – “one step above the hood” – which he ruled was unnecessarily prejudicial. It kept with his practice of minimizing the role of race in the case, which gained attention because Lorincz is white and Owens was Black.
The woman was ultimately only allowed to testify that her neighborhood was economically disadvantaged. Otherwise, her contributions did not add anything jurors hadn’t heard five times over.
Defense attorneys are expected to interview an expert witness – most likely a psychologist or something similar – when court resumes Thursday. They still have not said if they plan to have Lorincz testify in her own defense.
The judge said the trial is “well on track” to wrap up by the end of the week. If convicted of manslaughter, Lorincz faces up to 30 years in prison.
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