House cleaner shot to death on front porch after going to wrong house in
Indianapolis suburb
[November 08, 2025]
By TODD RICHMOND
Authorities are considering whether to charge an Indiana homeowner who
they say shot and killed a woman working as a house cleaner after she
mistakenly went to the wrong address.
Police officers found 32-year-old Maria Florinda Rios Perez dead just
before 7 a.m. Wednesday on the front porch of the home in Whitestown, an
Indianapolis suburb of about 10,000 people, according to a police news
release. She was part of a cleaning crew that had gone to the wrong
address, the release said.
Rios Perez’s husband, Mauricio Velazquez, told WRTV in Indianapolis that
he and his wife had been cleaning homes for seven months. Velazquez said
he was standing with her at the home's front door on Wednesday morning
but didn't realize she had been shot until she fell into his arms,
bleeding.
On a fundraising page, her brother described Rios Perez as a mother of
four children. Police said Friday that she was from Indianapolis but the
family plans to bury her in Guatemala, according to her obituary and her
brother's fundraising page. The Associated Press was not able to reach
family members directly on Friday.
Authorities have not publicly identified the shooter. Police turned over
the findings from their investigation to Boone County Prosecutor Kent
Eastwood on Friday afternoon, but the prosecutor said the decision on
whether to file charges won't be easy.
The case brings Indiana's castle doctrine laws squarely into play, he
said. Those laws allow a person to use reasonable force, including
deadly force, to stop what they reasonably believe is an unlawful entry
into their dwelling. Thirty-one states have similar laws on the books,
according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
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In this image from video provided by WRTV, husband of Maria Florinda
Rios Perez, Mauricio Velasquez, speaks during an interview in
Indianapolis on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2025. (WRTV via AP)
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.
Eastwood said he will have to pore over investigators' findings to
understand what happened in the moments leading up to the shooting.
That means reviewing “every second” of witnesses' taped interviews
and doorbell footage if police bring him any, he said.
“You need to understand all the details so you can understand what
happened and what is reasonable,” Eastwood said. “One of the hardest
things today in this world is to agree on what's reasonable. As a
prosecutor, those are things we have to grapple with.”
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