Indiana homeowner charged in fatal shooting of house cleaner who showed
up at the wrong door
[November 18, 2025]
By TODD RICHMOND and OBED LAMY
LEBANON, Ind. (AP) — An Indiana homeowner accused of killing a house
cleaner who mistakenly arrived at his front door was charged with
voluntary manslaughter on Monday in a case that could test the limits of
stand-your-ground laws.
Curt Andersen, 62, could face anywhere from 10 to 30 years in prison and
a $10,000 fine if he's convicted. He was being held in the Boone County
Jail pending an initial court hearing.
Officers found Maria Florinda Rios Perez De Velasquez, 32, dead on the
front porch of a home in Whitestown, an Indianapolis suburb, on Nov. 5.
Authorities said the Guatemalan immigrant was part of a cleaning crew
that went to the wrong house just before 7 a.m.
Andersen shot her through the front door with no warning about a minute
after hearing someone trying to unlock the door, according to a probable
cause statement.
Rios’ husband told media outlets that he was with her on the porch. He
didn’t realize she had been shot until she fell back into his arms,
bleeding. On a fundraising page, her brother described Rios as a mother
of four children.
Case puts stand-your-ground law in the spotlight
Indiana is one of 31 states with a stand-your-ground law that permits
homeowners to use deadly force to stop someone they believe is trying to
unlawfully enter their dwelling. But police said that there's no
evidence Rios entered the home before she was shot.
Andersen's attorney, Guy Relford, posted a statement on X saying he was
disappointed that prosecutors charged his client. He said Andersen had
every reason to believe his actions were justified and the
stand-your-ground law clearly protects him.
“Mr. Andersen's actions must be evaluated based on the circumstances as
he perceived them,” Relford said in the statement.
Boone County Prosecutor Kent Eastwood told reporters at a news
conference that the decision to charge Andersen wasn't difficult.
Stand-your-ground protections don't apply because Andersen lacked enough
information to know if his actions were reasonable, Eastwood said.
The prosecutor said he planned to prove that Andersen couldn’t have
reasonably believed he needed to use deadly force, given what he knew at
the time.
‘Commotion at the door’
According to the probable cause statement, Andersen told investigators
that he and his wife were asleep in an upstairs bedroom when he heard a
“commotion at the door" that grew more intense. He thought someone was
using keys or tools on the front door.
Frightened, he went to the top of the stairwell and saw through the
home's windows that two people were outside the front door. He said to
himself, “What am I going to do? It's not going away and I have to do
something now."
He said he loaded his handgun, went back to the windows and saw the
people “thrusting” at the door and getting more aggressive, according to
the statement.
He fired one shot toward the door. He said the door never opened and he
didn't announce himself or say anything before he pulled the trigger.
When told he had killed Rios, he put his head down on the table and said
he didn't mean for anything to happen to anybody.
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Boone County Prosecutor Kent Eastwood announces that voluntary
manslaughter charges have been filed against an Indiana homeowner in
the killing of Maria Florinda Rios Perez De Velasquez in Lebanon,
Ind., Monday, Nov. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
Wife says Andersen told a neighbor he would shoot any intruder
Andersen's wife, Yoshie Andersen, told investigators that her
husband told her that he told a neighbor if anyone tried to break
into his house he would shoot them. The probable cause statement
does not say when this conversation happened.
She added that her husband fired the shot from the top of the stairs
and neither of them went downstairs. He fired the shot and then told
her to call 911, she said.
No evidence of forcible entry
Investigators found a bullet hole in the door, but no evidence of
any forceful contact with the door itself, the latch or the door
frame, according to the probable cause statement.
Rios' husband, Mauricio Velasquez, told investigators that she tried
to open the door with keys from their cleaning company, but they
unknowingly were at the wrong address. He said they'd been trying to
open the door for 30 seconds to a minute before she was shot.
He said they never heard any voices from inside or saw any movement.
The couple didn't knock, bang on the door or use force of any kind
to enter the home and they never got inside, he said.
Stand-your-ground cases elsewhere
The shooting echoes a similar episode in Missouri in 2023 when an
86-year-old man shot Ralph Yarl after the 16-year-old Black teenager
came to his door by mistake. Missouri has a similar
stand-your-ground law, but prosecutors charged the shooter, Andrew
Lester, with first-degree assault and armed criminal action. He
ultimately pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and didn’t go to
trial.
In New York, which does not have a stand-your-ground law, a man was
convicted in 2024 of second-degree murder for fatally shooting a
woman inside a car who mistakenly came down the driveway of his
rural upstate home.
Jody Madeira, an Indiana University law professor who specializes in
gun rights, said last week that the Rios case was “horrible” and
“exceptionally unusual.”
In general, the public can legally access private property —
including a front porch — for a legitimate purpose until they are
told to leave, Madeira said. For example, a homeowner can’t legally
shoot a pizza delivery person or an Amazon driver just for stepping
onto their property, she said.
Madeira said Monday that the allegations in the probable cause
statement show that Curt Andersen was acting out of fear but that's
not enough to invoke the stand-your-ground law. There was no
unlawful entry and trying to insert a key into a lock or rattling a
doorknob isn't a reasonable justification for firing a shot, she
said.
“The reasonable person says, ‘hey, I have my phone here, I have
other options, I can shout a warning. It’s 7 a.m., is someone really
breaking into my house? He jumped up from bed and immediately went
into I'm combatting a break-in.”
___
Richmond reported from Madison, Wisconsin.
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