Man charged for killing a house cleaner who mistakenly showed up at his residence
An Indiana man who shot and killed a house cleaner who mistakenly showed up at his residence early one morning was formally charged with homicide this week.
Under U.S. and Indiana sentencing statutes , Curt Andersen, 62, could face 10 to 30 years in prison if convicted of the voluntary manslaughter of 32-year-old Maria Florinda Rios Perez De Velasquez in early November. He remains in custody at the Boone County Jail awaiting his initial court hearing where his lawyer is expected to seek bail.
In a Monday press conference, country prosecutor Kent Eastwood told local reporters that after assessing the evidence gathered through the Whitestown Police Department’s investigation, said it wasn’t difficult to determine that criminal charges were warranted.
“I hate to sound cavalier about this, but it wasn’t a hard decision,” he said, noting that his team will argue in court that the state’s “stand your ground law” doesn’t apply in the accused’s case.
But Andersen’s attorney, Guy Relford, founder of a gun rights organization called The 2A Project, said he looks forward to proving in court that his client’s “actions were fully justified by the ‘castle doctrine’ provision of Indiana’s self-defence law.”
According to a probable cause affidavit obtained by National Post, Velasquez and her husband, Mauricio, both originally from Guatemala, were provided with the address to a model home in Whitestown that needed cleaning. But when they put it in their GPS, it kept bringing them to Andersen’s home.
Assuming they were in the right place, they went to the front door where Velasquez tried to gain entry using the keys supplied by their boss.
“When asked, Mauricio stated that they were trying to gain access to the home for approximately 30 seconds to 1 minute using the different keys they had,” the affidavit reads.
Inside the home, Andersen told police he was awakened just before 7 a.m. to a commotion and what sounded like “some type of keys, tools, or instrument being used” to open his front door. He jumped from the bed and went to the top of the stairs looking straight down to the door where he could see two people through the windows around the door.
Fearing they were going to get in, Andersen told police he said to himself, “‘What am I going to do? It’s not going away and I have to do something now.’”
He went to his music room, which he also uses as a safe room, retrieved a handgun from a locked container, loaded it and returned to the top of the stairwell.
Andersen told police the people outside were aggressively “thrusting” at the front door.
Velasquez’s husband, however, told police “they did not bang or knock on the door” as they tried to gain entry. The forensic investigation of the scene also showed no signs of forced entry, no scratches around the latch or frame, and “the exterior of the front door had a layer of dust that was undisturbed.”
Without announcing himself, Andersen said he fired a single shot at the door after which he “heard a man crying out and weeping” beyond it. He then told his wife Yoshie to call 911 and he took the phone telling the dispatcher, “‘please come, please come, please come, they are trying to get in.’”
Outside, Velasquez was trying keys when she was shot near her temple with the bullet exiting through the back of her head, according to her husband. He saw no movement in the house and the only sound he heard from within was the gunshot.
“I never thought it was a shot, but I realized when my wife took two steps back, she looked like she’d been hit in the head,” her husband said in Spanish via a translator this week, as reported by WRTV.
“She fell into my arms, and I saw the blood. It went everywhere.”
The couple have four children together, ranging in age from 17 to just 11 months, according to a GoFundMe established to support the family.
After police arrived and Velasquez was pronounced dead, Andersen learned of what had transpired and “became upset and immediately put his head down on the table.” He later said, “he didn’t mean for anything to happen to anybody.”
Indiana is one of 31 states with “stand your ground laws” — legislation that says there is no duty to retreat when faced with a threat.
Eastwood explained that in a dwelling scenario such as this, the law says “a person is justified in using reasonable force, including deadly force, against any other person” if they feel it is necessary to avert or stop an unlawful entry or attack.
Based on the evidence and circumstances of this case, Eastwood said he will argue Andersen’s actions don’t grant him those legal protections because he didn’t have “the proper information” to warrant his actions.
“Once we had all the information in front of us, once we looked at the law, once we looked at the case law, it became clear what the appropriate way to proceed with this case was,” he said.
Relford disagreed and said Andersen had reason to believe his actions were necessary.
“We also believe that Mr. Andersen’s actions are being unfairly judged based on facts that were unknowable to him as events unfolded that early morning,” he wrote in a statement posted to X. “The law does not allow a criminal conviction based on hindsight. Instead, Mr. Andersen’s actions must be evaluated based on the circumstances as he perceived them.”
The death of Maria Florinda Rios Perez de Velasquez is a terrible tragedy that is heartbreaking for everyone involved. And while we are disappointed that the Boone County Prosecutor's Office has elected to file criminal charges against Mr. Curt Andersen, I look forward to proving…
— Guy Relford (@guyrelford) November 17, 2025
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