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
Authorities are considering whether to charge an Indiana homeowner whom they say shot and killed a woman working as a house cleaner after she came to the wrong address.
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.
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“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.
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.”
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Richmond reported from Madison, Wisconsin.
