Prosecutors say it will take days to decide whether to charge an Indiana homeowner they say shot and killed a house cleaner after she mistakenly went to the wrong address. Boone County Prosecutor Kent Eastwood said in a news release that he anticipates it will take at least several days to review all the evidence in Maria Florinda Rios Perez De Velasquez’s death Nov. 5. He says he may not announce a charging decision until the end of the week or early next week. Velasquez’s family and their attorney held a small demonstration on the steps of Eastwood’s office Monday demanding justice.
LEBANON, Ind. (AP) — A decision on whether to file charges against an Indiana homeowner suspected of killing of a Guatemalan house cleaner after she mistakenly went to the wrong address may not come for days, prosecutors say.
Investigators turned over their findings in Maria Florinda Rios Perez De Velasquez's death to Boone County Prosecutor Kent Eastwood on Friday. Eastwood said in a news release that his review will take “several days.” He promised to announce his decision publicly but said he may not do so until the end of this week or early next week.
“Our hearts remain with Mrs. Rios Perez de Velasquez's loved ones,” Eastwood said in the release. “Justice requires patience, and we ask for the community's understanding as we work diligently to reach the right decision under Indiana law.”
The woman's family and supporters gathered on the steps of Eastwood's office on Monday with a photo of her and signs that read “Justice for Maria.”
“Although we're immigrants, we still have rights,” Rios Perez De Velasquez's husband, Mauricio Velasquez, said in Spanish. “We're not animals. We're people just like everyone else. We have blood, too. All I'm asking for is justice.”
Authorities have said the couple was part of a cleaning crew and had gone to a home in Whitestown, an Indianapolis suburb, early Wednesday morning for a job, but it was the wrong address. Police officers found the woman dead on the front porch of the home just before 7 a.m.
Eastwood told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that the homeowner had shot her. Police Capt. John Jurkash said in an email to the AP that the shot came from inside the house. Mauricio Velasquez told WRTV in Indianapolis that he was standing on the porch with his wife and didn't realize she had been shot until she fell into his arms, bleeding.
Authorities have not publicly identified the shooter.
Complicating Eastwood's charging decision is Indiana's stand-your-ground-law, which permits residents to use deadly force to stop someone they reasonably believe is trying to enter their dwelling unlawfully. Thirty-one states have such laws.
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.
“What my family and I want is justice to be done,” the woman's father, Mario Rios Ramirez, said in Spanish during the demonstration at Eastwood's office on Monday. “Because if there is no justice, this will keep happening to other people. As Hispanic people, we came to this country out of necessity. We don't come here to cause harm. That's not our intention."
