An Indiana man has been charged in the fatal shooting of a woman who mistook his house for the one she was meant to clean.
The man, 62-year-old Curt Andersen, was taken into custody and being held without the possibility of bail on Monday, according to NBC News. He was charged with one count of voluntary manslaughter.
The lawyer for Andersen claimed he shot the woman, 32-year-old Maria Florinda Rios Perez, using “reasonable force” within the bounds of Indiana’s self-defense laws to “prevent an unlawful entry into his home.”
Boone County Prosecutor Kent Eastwood disagreed in a statement to reporters.
Andersen "did not have a reasonable belief that that type of force was necessary, given all the facts," Eastwood said, adding that the charge should not “be interpreted as a challenge to Indiana's stand your ground law, a person’s right to self-defense.”
Perez, a Guatelemalan immigrant and mom of four including an 11-month-old, died in the shooting in the Indianapolis suburb of Whitestown on Nov. 5. She and her husband were hired to clean a model home in Andersen’s neighborhood, but their boss had sent them to the wrong address.
Per a criminal complaint written by a Whitestown police detective, Andersen and his wife awoke to their front doorknob shaking. Andersen then retrieved a Glock 48 semi-automatic handgun because he "could see two individuals outside the front door through the top and side windows at the front door.”
His criminal defense attorney, Guy Relford, said the death of Perez was “a terrible tragedy” but that Andersen “had every reason to believe his actions were absolutely necessary and fully justified at the time” of the shooting.