🔗 Share this article

Law enforcement officials in the state are considering whether to file charges against a resident who reportedly shot and killed a woman after she accidentally arrived to the wrong address where she believed assigned to clean a property.

Officers found the victim, 32 years old, dead just before 7am on the front porch of a home in Whitestown, an area of about 10,000 people near Indianapolis.

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

Officials did not publicly named the shooter, but investigators turned over their findings from the investigation to the Boone County prosecutor, the local district attorney, on Friday.

This case will focus on Indiana’s “castle doctrine” laws, which allow a person to use deadly force to prevent what they reasonably believe is an unlawful intrusion into their home.

However the killing has shocked many. The victim’s spouse, Mauricio Velazquez, told WRTV that he was present 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 brother mentioned that Rios Perez was a mother of four.

A majority of US states have comparable statutes like Indiana’s on the books, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In comparable incidents elsewhere, prosecutors have successfully brought charges against people who used a firearm outside their residences, such as a admission of guilt by an 86-year-old man who shot a Black teenager after the youth approached his home accidentally. In New York, a man was convicted of second-degree murder for killing a woman in a vehicle who entered his property by mistake.

The incident highlights ongoing debates surrounding self-defense laws and their application in everyday situations.