Hoosier State Female Fatally Shot After Arriving at Wrong Residence to Clean

Law enforcement officials in the state are weighing whether to file charges against a resident who reportedly fatally shot a woman when she mistakenly went to the wrong address where she believed scheduled to clean a property.

Officers found Maria Florinda Rios Perez De Velasquez, aged 32, deceased just before 7am on the front porch of a home in Whitestown, a community of approximately 10,000 residents outside Indianapolis.

She belonged to a cleaning crew that had gone to the wrong address, police stated in a press statement.

Officials did not publicly named the shooter, but police submitted their findings from the investigation to Kent Eastwood, the local district attorney, on Friday.

This case will highlight Indiana’s “castle doctrine” laws, which allow a person to use lethal force to prevent what they reasonably believe is an illegal entry into their home.

But the shooting has shocked many. Rios Perez’s husband, her husband, told WRTV that he was standing with her at the front door but didn’t realize she had been hit until she fell into his arms, bleeding. On a fundraising page, her sibling said that Rios Perez was a mother of four.

Thirty-one states have similar laws like Indiana’s in place, as reported by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In similar cases elsewhere, prosecutors have successfully brought charges against people who used a firearm outside their homes, including a guilty plea by an 86-year-old man who shot Ralph Yarl after the youth approached his home accidentally. In New York, a person was found guilty of homicide for killing a woman in a vehicle who entered his driveway by mistake.