Indiana homeowner charged with manslaughter after fatal shooting of cleaner

Boone County Courthouse in Indiana is set to hear the case of Curt Andersen, 62, who has been charged with voluntary manslaughter after allegedly shooting a cleaner through his front door. Photo / Getty Images

The house cleaners had circled the block in a town in Indiana, United States, a few times that morning, following the mapping app’s directions to the location to which they had been sent. It kept routing them back to the same grey-shingled house on Maize Lane, so María Florinda Ríos Pérez de Velásquez and her husband, Mauricio Velásquez, walked to the porch and began trying the keys, court records say.

When none of them worked – something they would normally call their boss about – they didn’t even have time to reach for their phones, according to court records. Ríos Pérez de Velásquez was on the ground with a gunshot wound to her head less than two minutes later, the records state. The homeowner, 62-year-old Curt Andersen, allegedly fired through the front door.

Boone County prosecutors charged Andersen, of Whitestown, with voluntary manslaughter Monday for a killing that started – like several other shootings in recent years – with someone approaching a stranger’s home intending them no harm. Across the United States, shootings linked to wrong addresses, mistaken knocks and routine doorstep interactions have intensified the debate over how far “stand your ground” protections extend in a country with historic levels of gun ownership.

Andersen’s attorney, Guy Relford, said his client’s actions were “fully justified” under Indiana’s self-defence law, which allows someone to use deadly force if they reasonably believe it’s necessary to prevent unlawful entry into their home. Boone County Prosecutor Kent Eastwood told reporters Monday that his office believed the “stand your ground” law did not protect Andersen because he “did not have a reasonable belief that that type of force was necessary, given all the facts that he had at that time”.

The National Rifle Association has said “stand your ground” laws protect people’s “fundamental right to self-defence” and are a necessary public safety tool, but studies have found they are linked to an increase in firearm homicide rates.

“We cannot, as a society, have people deciding literally to shoot first and ask questions later,” said Jody Madeira, a law professor at Indiana University.

The Whitestown shooting left Velásquez as the sole provider to the four children – the youngest being a year old – he shared with his wife. The couple came to the United States from Guatemala three years ago, settling in Indianapolis, where Ríos Pérez de Velásquez had a few relatives nearby.

The pair found work as contractors for a cleaning service. On November 5, they were tasked with cleaning the windows of a recently constructed model home that is part of a new housing development directly east of Andersen’s house, court documents say.

Recent satellite pictures reviewed by The Washington Post show ongoing construction in the new neighbourhood. However, that development does not appear on Google Maps, which instead shows a plot of empty farmland and a cut-off road.

Shortly before 7am, Ríos Pérez de Velásquez and her husband were standing on the front porch of what they believed was the house they were meant to clean, court records say. Given that it was a model home, the records say, they thought no one was living there and observed no lights on inside or cars in the driveway. The pair started trying the keys.

Upstairs, the noise at the door woke Andersen and his wife – self-described “night owls” who had gone to bed only a few hours earlier, according to court records. Andersen’s wife later told investigators that her husband panicked and reacted immediately.

“Oh s*** … it’s a break-in,” she recalled him saying, according to court documents.

Andersen described the sound as a “commotion”, the people outside “thrusting” at the door in a way he believed was growing more aggressive, court records state. His wife recalled the steady rattle of a locked door knob turning again and again.

After the shooting, Andersen told investigators he had previously watched videos about what to do if someone tries to enter your home and had devised a plan for a potential break-in, according to court records.

Convinced that was happening, he did not approach the door, turn on a light or call out, court records state. Instead, he allegedly moved to the room he called his “safe room”, unlocked a protective case and loaded his Glock pistol.

During his interrogation, Andersen told investigators he had bought his first gun in 2023 to protect his home, though he never carried it outside. He traded that firearm for the Glock in September but said he had never fired either weapon. The only time he had ever shot a gun, he told investigators, was during his service in the US Navy.

Andersen enlisted in 1981 and was later commissioned as an officer in the Navy Reserve, according to a service record summary provided by the Navy. He served in the Nurse Corps, where he would have overseen care for service members. His awards indicate he was involved in combat during the Gulf War, though his job would not often include the use of weapons outside of training and familiarisation. He retired in 2007 as a lieutenant commander, his record says.

In recent years, Andersen had twice called law enforcement to report “suspicious activity” at his home, said Captain John Jurkash, a Whitestown police spokesperson. But officers responding to the calls for service – once in 2023 and again in 2024 – “determined there was no criminal activity afoot”, Jurkash said.

The morning of November 5, Andersen stood at the top of his home’s stairs and fired a single shot through the closed, locked front door, court records state.

A cry rose immediately from the porch. Andersen told his wife to call 911; when she handed him the phone, he pleaded with the dispatcher, “Please come, please come, please come, they are trying to get in”, according to the court records.

The shooting has intensified debate over "stand your ground" laws and their implications for public safety. Photo / 123rf

On the other side of the door, Velásquez held his wife as she collapsed. A bullet had entered her temple and exited the back of her head, court documents say.

Velásquez told investigators he didn’t understand what had happened until he saw her fall. He knelt beside her, speaking to her as she bled on the porch. He said he heard no voices from inside the house – only the gunshot.

Police arrived to find Velásquez still on the porch, grasping his wife. Upstairs, Andersen told the 911 dispatcher he was too afraid to come down, convinced the people outside were “trying to get in”, court documents state.

Officers asked Velásquez to carry his wife’s less-than-1.5m body towards the street for his own safety, then spent several minutes coaxing Andersen out of the house, according to the records. Andersen eventually stepped through the back door with his hands raised and police detained him and his wife.

A pair of black shoes, a black pom beanie and a tube of lip gloss were later found on the porch alongside a pool of blood. An undisturbed layer of dust covered the front door, which was locked with a dead bolt and handle, investigators wrote in court documents. The door had no handprints or evidence of forceful contact and its latch and frame had no scratches, the records state.

“There was no sign of forced entry,” the investigators wrote.

Madeira, the law professor, said court documents suggest the crime scene examination was “very revelatory because that showed that this was not a very aggressive attempt at entry”. The records also suggest a “drastic difference” between what investigators found at the scene and Andersen’s perspective of an increasingly forceful commotion that “terrified him”, Madeira said.

Indiana’s law on self-defence is considered among the broadest in the nation. It allows the use of “reasonable force, including deadly force” – even against a law enforcement officer – if someone reasonably believes it is necessary to stop an unlawful entry or attack on their home, surrounding property or occupied vehicle. The law also removes the duty to retreat, and the state’s code provides civil immunity for those who use force justified under the statute.

Relford, Andersen’s attorney, called the death of Ríos Pérez de Velásquez a “terrible tragedy that is heartbreaking for everyone involved”. But he said his client’s actions were protected by the state’s “castle doctrine” provision, which allows for deadly force to prevent an unlawful entry into a person’s home.

“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,” Relford, who is also the founder of a gun rights organisation, wrote Monday on X. “The law does not allow a criminal conviction based on hindsight.”

Madeira said that “castle doctrine doesn’t activate just because someone’s on the porch”.

Investigators spent days compiling their report, emphasising the case was complex. Ríos Pérez de Velásquez’s family rallied on the steps of the prosecutor’s office on November 10 to urge charges and created a webpage to advocate for their cause.

“We know we are immigrants, but we have rights, because we are not animals,” her husband said in Spanish at the rally, wearing a beanie that read “Justice for Maria”.

“We are people like them,” Velásquez said. “We have blood.”

Inside an interrogation room, Andersen walked police through the timeline of what he repeatedly called “the incident”, court records state. Authorities then finally informed him of the outcome: his shot had killed a female house cleaner, the documents add.

He became upset and put his head down on the table, court records say.

“After some time,” investigators wrote, “Curt said he didn’t mean for anything to happen to anybody.”

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