OCALA, Fla. (AP) — A Florida mother was fatally shot through the front door of her neighbor’s home while her 9-year-old son stood next to her, a violent culmination of what police said was a 2½-year feud.

Ajike Owens, 35, was fatally shot after going to the Ocala apartment of her neighbor, who earlier had yelled at Owens’ children as they played nearby and threw a pair of skates that hit one of them, Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods said at a news conference Monday.

Deputies responding to a trespassing call at the apartment Friday night found Owens suffering from gunshot wounds. The mother of four was taken to a nearby hospital, where she died. Ocala is about 70 miles (110 kilometers) northwest of Orlando.

“I wish our shooter would have called us instead of taking actions into her own hands,” Woods said. “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.”

Since January 2021, Woods said, deputies responded at least a half-dozen times in connection with the feuding between Owens and the woman who shot her. The sheriff’s office hasn’t arrested or identified the shooter.

Woods said detectives are working with the State Attorney’s Office and must investigate possible self-defense claims before they can move forward with any possible criminal charges.

The sheriff pointed out that because of Florida’s “stand your ground” law, he can’t legally make an arrest unless he can prove the shooter did not act in self-defense.

Before the shooting, Owens’ children had been playing in a field near the shooter’s apartment. When Owens later confronted the woman at her apartment, an argument ensued, and the woman shot Owens through the front door, according to police.

Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who is representing Owens’ family, said in a statement that the shooter had been yelling racial slurs at the children before the confrontation with their mother. Owens and her children are Black.

The sheriff’s office hasn’t confirmed there were slurs uttered or said whether race was a factor in the shooting.

Woods also said they haven’t interviewed Owens’ children, who witnessed the shooting, because investigators first want child therapists to work with them. Most of the information the deputies have is coming from the shooter, Woods said.

“There was a lot of aggressiveness from both of them, back and forth,” Wood said the shooter told investigators. “Whether it be banging on the doors, banging on the walls and threats being made. And then at that moment is when Ms. Owens was shot through the door.”

Woods was joined at his news conference by community leaders and a local attorney retained by the family, Anthony Thomas. Their singular message was a call for patience while the sheriff’s office conducted its investigation.

During a vigil with the family later Monday, Thomas said the sheriff had promised him the most professional service that he and his deputies could provide, and Thomas plans to hold the agency to that.

During the same gathering, Owens’ mother, Pamela Dias, said that she was seeking justice for her daughter and her grandchildren.

“My daughter, my grandchildren’s mother, was shot and killed with her 9-year-old son standing next to her,” Dias said. “She had no weapon. She posed no imminent threat to anyone.”

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — While judges, lawyers and support staff at the federal courthouse in Concord, New Hampshire, keep the American justice system buzzing, thousands of humble honeybees on the building’s roof are playing their part in a more important task — feeding the world.

The Warren B. Rudman courthouse is one of several federal facilities around the country participating in the General Services Administration’s Pollinator Initiative, a government program aimed at assessing and promoting the health of bees and other pollinators, which are critical to life on Earth.

“Anybody who eats food needs bees,” said Noah Wilson-Rich, co-founder, CEO and chief scientific officer of the Boston-based Best Bees company, which contracts with the government to take care of the honeybee hives at the New Hampshire courthouse and at some other federal buildings.

Bees help pollinate the fruits and vegetables that sustain humans, he said. They pollinate hay and alfalfa, which feed cattle that provide the meat we eat. And they promote the health of plants that, through photosynthesis, give us clean air to breathe.

Yet the busy insects that contribute an estimated $25 billion to the U.S. economy annually are under threat from diseases, agricultural chemicals and habitat loss that kill about half of all honeybee hives annually. Without human intervention, including beekeepers creating new hives, the world could experience a bee extinction that would lead to global hunger and economic collapse, Wilson-Rich said.

The pollinator program is part of the federal government’s commitment to promoting sustainability, which includes reducing greenhouse gas emissions and promoting climate resilient infrastructure, said David Johnson, the General Services Administration’s sustainability program manager for New England.

The administration’s program started last year with hives at 11 sites.

Some of those sites are no longer in the program. Hives placed at the National Archives building in Waltham, Massachusetts, last year did not survive the winter.

Since then, other sites were added. Two hives, each home to thousands of bees, were placed on the roof of the Rudman building in March.

The program is collecting data to find out whether the honeybees, which can fly 3 to 5 miles (5 to 8 kilometers) from the roof in their quest for pollen, can help the health of not just the plants on the roof, but also of the flora in the entire area, Johnson said.

“Honeybees are actually very opportunistic,” he said. “They will feed on a lot of different types of plants.”

The program can help identify the plants and landscapes beneficial to pollinators and help the government make more informed decisions about what trees and flowers to plant on building grounds.

Best Bees tests the plant DNA in the honey to get an idea of the plant diversity and health in the area, Wilson-Rich said, and they have found that bees that forage on a more diverse diet seem to have better survival and productivity outcomes.

Other federal facilities with hives include the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services headquarters in Baltimore; the federal courthouse in Hammond, Indiana; the Federal Archives Records Center in Chicago; and the Denver Federal Center.

The federal government isn’t alone in its efforts to save the bees. The hives placed at federal sites are part of a wider network of about 1,000 hives at home gardens, businesses and institutions nationwide that combined can help determine what’s helping the bees, what’s hurting them and why.

The General Services Administration’s Pollinator Initiative is also looking to identify ways to keep the bee population healthy and vibrant and model those lessons at other properties — both government and private sector — said Amber Levofsky, the senior program advisor for the administration’s Center for Urban Development.

“The goal of this initiative was really aimed at gathering location-based data at facilities to help update directives and policies to help facilities managers to really target pollinator protection and habitat management regionally,” she said.

And there is one other benefit to the government honeybee program that’s already come to fruition: The excess honey that’s produced is donated to area food banks.