Authorities in Indiana are considering whether to charge a homeowner who they say shot and killed a woman after she mistakenly went to the wrong address where she thought she was turning up to clean a property.
Police officers found Maria Florinda Rios Perez De Velasquez, 32, dead just before 7am Wednesday on the front porch of a home in Whitestown, an Indianapolis suburb of about 10,000 people.
She was part of a cleaning crew that had gone to the wrong address, police said in a press release.
Authorities have not publicly identified the shooter, but police turned over the findings from their investigation to Kent Eastwood, the Boone county prosecutor, on Friday afternoon.
The case will put a focus on Indiana’s “castle doctrine” laws w…
Authorities in Indiana are considering whether to charge a homeowner who they say shot and killed a woman after she mistakenly went to the wrong address where she thought she was turning up to clean a property.
Police officers found Maria Florinda Rios Perez De Velasquez, 32, dead just before 7am Wednesday on the front porch of a home in Whitestown, an Indianapolis suburb of about 10,000 people.
She was part of a cleaning crew that had gone to the wrong address, police said in a press release.
Authorities have not publicly identified the shooter, but police turned over the findings from their investigation to Kent Eastwood, the Boone county prosecutor, on Friday afternoon.
The case will put a focus on Indiana’s “castle doctrine” laws which allow a person to use deadly force, to stop what they reasonably believe is an unlawful entry into their dwelling.
But the killing has shocked many. Rios Perez’s husband, Mauricio Velazquez, told WRTV in Indianapolis that he was standing with her at the home’s front door but didn’t realize she had been shot until she fell into his arms, bleeding. On a fundraising page, her brother said Rios Perez was a mother of four children.
Thirty-one states have similar laws to Indiana on the books, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
In similar cases elsewhere, prosecutors have successfully brought charges against people who opened fire outside their homes, including a guilty plea by an 86-year-old man who shot Ralph Yarl after the Black teenager came to his door by mistake. In New York, a man was convicted of second-degree murder for fatally shooting a woman inside a car who came down his driveway by mistake.
The Associated Press contributed to this report