“The Perfect Neighbor”, Netflix's latest documentary, was released on Friday on the streaming platform, currently ranked 3rd in the list of the most watched productions.
The documentary, which features footage from police body cameras, tells the story of a dispute between neighbors with a tragic ending, according to Netflix.
The production, which explores the reality of self-defense laws in the US, depicts an incident that took place in 2023, when a Florida woman shot and killed her neighbor, a black mother of four, in front of her 9-year-old son.
There are no interviews, just tapes from the past two years of police interactions with the killer, Susan Lorincz, 60, who frequently complained that neighborhood children were making noise when they played in a vacant lot near her home in Ocala, Fla., as well as body camera footage from interviews with her neighbors, Time magazine writes.
Lorincz was convicted of manslaughter with a firearm and is now serving a 25-year prison sentence.
The “perfect neighbor” often called the police
According to Time, before the neighbor dispute that turned into a deadly tragedy, Lorincz frequently called the police to report rowdy neighborhood kids. The woman alleged that the children were trespassing on her property, constantly yelling at her, telling her to shut up and threatening her with death.
Lorincz complained to police that she was constantly attacked and that she “feared for her life” because of threats from the children.
The documentary, whose name was inspired by a statement from the woman, shows the recordings she made of the children playing, to show to the police. “I'm like a perfect neighbor,” Lorincz told officers in one of the interviews.
The footage shows that officers repeatedly responded with skepticism to Lorincz's calls because she was the only resident with such complaints. The children were not, strictly speaking, playing on her property, but in her neighbor's yard.
What the neighbors said about the woman
The neighbor encouraged them to come to him and taught the children to play football. Lorincz asked the homeowner to put a “No Trespassing” sign on her lawn to demarcate the area between her property and the neighbor's yard.
Neighbors said Lorincz was cursing at their children and were disturbed to learn he was recording them. The children told police they were just playing hide-and-seek in the yard and that Lorincz was harassing them, insulting them and threatening them with an umbrella or a gun.
The children said she once even threw roller skates at them, although Lorincz claimed she was returning a pair of skates left on her lawn. They say Lorincz accused them of trying to steal his truck.
“We are 11 years old!”, one of the children is heard saying in the documentary. They nicknamed Lorincz “Karen,” a slang term for angry middle-aged white women who can be racist in their complaints.
From phone calls to a tragedy
The documentary focuses on the fatal incident on June 2, 2023, when Lorincz claimed some boys trespassed on her property and when she told them to leave, they said they would call their mother. Lorincz called the police, and the dispatcher told him that officers would be on the scene shortly.
Lorincz then claimed she was in the house when Ajike Owens, a McDonald's manager who lived in her neighborhood, started knocking on her door. She grabbed a gun and fired through the door, not realizing that Owens' son was standing right next to her. “I thought he was going to kill me,” Lorincz told police, repeatedly insisting it was not an intentional, premeditated act.
The woman later apologized to the children, explaining that she “acted out of fear” because she feared their mother would kill her.
The “Stand Your Ground” law is a legal principle found in many US states, including Florida, that eliminates a person's obligation to retreat before using force, including lethal force, in self-defense when there is an imminent threat of serious bodily harm.
The most famous case in which the law resulted in an acquittal under this law is that of George Zimmerman, a white man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old African-American.
The judge appreciated that the woman acted out of anger
However, in video footage of the police interview, detectives say they don't understand why she pulled out the gun just two minutes after the 911 dispatcher said police were on their way to her home. During sentencing in 2024, the judge argued that Lorincz acted more out of anger than fear.
“If we don't testify against such crimes, if we turn our backs, if we don't bring them to light, they will continue to exist in the dark,” director Geeta Gandbhir told Time magazine.
By analyzing footage captured by police video cameras over the course of two years, Gandbhir hoped to turn a tool meant to protect the police into a tool to expose their wrongdoing.
Gandbhir, whose family was close to the victim, wonders why the police didn't call in a social worker or some other kind of mediator to calm the situation.
She believes the police should have taken action against Lorincz much sooner, given the guns in her home and the numerous calls to the police for situations that weren't considered an emergency.
“The police don't have to come in with guns and beat people to fail the community,” the director said. “If you can pick up a gun to settle a petty dispute with your neighbor, what else are you capable of?”
