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Officials are considering what fees to charge Indiana They say that the owner of the house shot and killed a woman who used to do cleaning work in the house because she accidentally went to the wrong address.
police officer Maria Florinda Rios Perez de Velasquez, 32, was found dead just before 7 a.m. Wednesday on the front porch of a home in Whitestown. indianapolis The suburb of about 10,000 people, according to a police news release. The release said she was part of a cleaning crew that went to the wrong address.
Ríos Pérez’s husband, Mauricio Velazquez, told WRTV in Indianapolis that he and his wife had been cleaning houses for seven months. Velazquez said he was standing with her at the front door of the home Wednesday morning, but did not realize until she collapsed bleeding in his arms.
On a fundraising page, her brother described Ríos Pérez as a mother of four children. Police Friday said she was from Indianapolis, but according to her obituary and her brother’s fundraising page, the family plans to bury her in Guatemala. associated Press The family members could not be contacted directly on Friday.
Authorities have not publicly identified the shooter. Police turned over the findings of their investigation to Boone County Prosecutor Kent Eastwood Friday afternoon, but the prosecutor said the decision to file charges would not be an easy one.
The case fully applies Indiana’s castle doctrine laws, he said. Those laws allow a person to use reasonable force, including deadly force, to prevent unlawful entry into their residence. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, thirty-one states have similar laws.
In other similar cases, prosecutors have successfully brought charges against people who opened fire outside their homes, including the guilty plea of an 86-year-old man who accidentally shot Ralph Yarl after the black teen arrived at his door. In New York, a man was convicted of second-degree murder for shooting and killing a woman inside a car who accidentally pulled into his path.
Eastwood said he would have to look at investigators’ findings to understand what happened in the moments before the shooting. That means reviewing “every second” of witnesses’ taped interviews and doorbell footage, he said, if police come upon them.
“You need to understand all the details so you can understand what happened and what’s appropriate,” Eastwood said. “One of the hardest things in this world today is to agree on what is fair. As a prosecutor, these are things we have to grapple with.”