A 62-year-old Indiana man is facing charges of voluntary manslaughter in the shooting death of a housekeeper who inadvertently tried to enter his home instead of the one she was supposed to clean.
32-year-old Maria Florinda Ríos Pérez de Velázquez was shot and killed early on November 5 after she and her husband tried to unlock Kurt Andersen's front door. The pair were supposed to be cleaning a model home in the same neighborhood, but the Guatemalan immigrants apparently showed up at the Andersen home instead of the empty house just to east and rear of Andersen's residence.
Andersen told police that he woke up on November 5 to the sound of someone trying to gain entry to his home. He spotted two individuals as he looked out the window, and believing he was being targeted for a home invasion, grabbed his handgun. According to Andersen, about 10 to 15 seconds after he loaded his pistol, he fired a single round through the closed front door of his home. Immediately afterward, Andersen and his wife heard the anguished cries of the woman's husband.
Ríos Pérez was trying to unlock the front door with a key they were given when the gunshot rang out. Her husband said they were on the porch between 30 seconds to a minute before the gunshot, while Andersen told police it was "over a minute."
"Mauricio mentioned that in the past, when the keys wouldn’t work, they would just call his boss and inform him," police state, "but he didn’t have the opportunity to do so today."
After initially refusing a police order to exit the home, Andersen and his wife walked out the back door and were detained. Ríos Pérez was pronounced dead at the scene.
When police told Andersen that Ríos Pérez was part of a cleaning crew who went to the wrong address, he "became upset and immediately put his head down on the table." He told police he "didn't mean for anything to happen to anybody."
While Indiana has both a Castle Doctrine and Stand Your Ground law, the decision to charge Andersen ultimately boils down to the prosecutor's contention that the 62-year-old did not have a reasonable belief that it was necessary to use lethal force to prevent death, serious bodily injury, or a forcible felony.
Andersen's attorney, longtime 2A advocate and legal specialist Guy Relford, appearing on a morning radio show in Indianapolis, explained why he disagrees with the decision to charge his client.
During the show, Relford fielded questions from hosts Jason Hammer and Nigel Laskowski, ranging from why he took the case to his client's status.
"You go to sleep in your own bed," Relford said, "and the next thing you know you're accused of a very serious crime."
Relford side-stepped several questions, saying that the case was ongoing but spoke generally about the legal precedent relevant to the case.
At the heart of his argument was that Andersen can only be judged based on what he reasonably could have known at the time.
"The law does not allow a conviction based on hindsight," Relford said, reading from a statement, which he also posted on X.
Relford expressed sympathy for Ríos Pérez and her family, saying she didn't deserve what happened to her.
"But that's not the question when it comes to the criminality of the act," he said.
I think this is going to be a close case if it does end up going to a jury, and again, it comes down to a question of reasonableness. Was it reasonable for Andersen to believe that his home was about to be invaded by two strangers on his porch, and was his single shot through a closed front door a reasonable response to that perceived threat?
Should Andersen have had to wait until the door to his home was breached before pulling the trigger? If he had, he likely would never have fired the fatal shot. Mauricio Velasquez told officers that in the past, when he and his wife discovered their key wouldn't work they would call his boss to let him know, but Andersen fired the shot through his door before he had the chance to do so.
There's nothing in Indiana's Castle Doctrine, though, that requires a homeowner to wait until their domicile has been breached before acting in self-defense. In hindsight it would have been the best thing to do, but as Relford says, the law doesn't allow for a conviction based on hindsight.
It's a tough case, and I honestly could see it going either way if the case gets to a jury. Andersen has a very capable attorney in Relford, but prosecutors have a very emotional case to present to jurors, and they'll do their best to persuade them that Andersen acted unreasonably and unlawfully when he fired his gun through his locked front door at the strangers who were trying to get inside his home.
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