(This story may update.)
Though the fatal shooting of a woman who arrived at the wrong Whitestown address for a cleaning job drew international media attention within days, authorities remained remarkably tight-lipped about their investigation until nearly two weeks after the death of Maria Florinda Ríos Pérez de Velázquez.
In the absence of verifiable facts, misinformation about Ríos Pérez’s death and the shooter’s identity flooded social media. Even after the Boone County Prosecutor’s Office announced a voluntary manslaughter charge against the alleged shooter, 62-year-old Curt Andersen, on Nov. 17, misinformation about the shooting continues to proliferate online — a fact that Prosecutor Kent Eastwood acknowledged alongside the case’s filing.
“During the pendency of this investigation, social media has circulated false and misleading information,” Eastwood said. “This must stop immediately. It does not help the process, and it does not help this case. It undermines the integrity of the judicial system, spreads confusion, and harms both the victim’s family and the accused’s right to a fair trial.”
We’ve gathered some of the most commonly spread details about the Whitestown shooting and looked into their accuracy. Here’s what we found.
The facts: What happened in the shooting of Maria Florinda Rios Perez de Velazquez
Before dawn on Nov. 5, Ríos Pérez, 32, and her husband, Mauricio Velázquez, drove to a cleaning job assigned by their employer.
The couple, who believed that they were at the correct location, were trying to unlock the house’s front door with a set of keys when a shot was fired through the door, fatally striking Ríos Pérez in the head.
At 6:49 a.m., the Whitestown Metropolitan Police Department received a 911 call about a possible “home invasion” on Maize Lane. Curt Andersen told his wife to make the call after he fired a shot through the front door, according to court documents.
The phone was then handed to Andersen, who told dispatchers that he believed two Hispanic males were breaking into the home, but he was unsure if they had a weapon, according to a two-and-a-half-minute recording of police scanner traffic that was posted on social media by Fox59’s Max Lewis on Nov. 13.
When officers arrived at the scene, they found Ríos Pérez bleeding from a gunshot wound on the front porch. Her husband held her, sobbing. According to police radio communications, officers requested paramedics shortly after arriving on scene.
Police moved the couple away from the porch before medics pronounced Ríos Pérez dead at the scene.
Officers, meanwhile, tried to get Andersen to step outside, but he said that he was afraid and requested to be taken into custody behind the property.
The caller and his wife eventually exited through the back door and were both detained by police, according to a court documents and dispatch audio from that day. Police then secured the property and collected the Glock 48 semi-automatic pistol used to shoot Ríos Pérez. At 7:12 a.m., the Boone County Coroner’s Office was called to the home.
Velázquez told police the couple had arrived at the home for a cleaning job, which police quickly verified.
“The facts gathered do not support that a residential entry occurred,” Scott Rolston, the Chief of Police for the Whitestown Metropolitan Police Department, said in a statement hours after the shooting.
When asked if the department had any suspects in custody on Nov. 5, Whitestown police declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation.
Police and prosecutors refused to release the name of the homeowner or other parties involved before charges were filed, citing that “this is a complex, delicate, and evolving case, and it would be both inappropriate and potentially dangerous to disclose that information.”
Eastwood, the Boone County Prosecutor, noted on Nov. 7 that this case was complex due to the language of the state’s stand your ground law.
After a days-long review by Eastwood’s office, Curt Andersen was charged with voluntary manslaughter, a level 2 felony.
The claim: The shooter was a police officer
The fact that the shooter wasn’t immediately identified led some to believe that he was tied to law enforcement.
Public records identified the homeowner as Curt Douglas Andersen, but authorities would not confirm whether the homeowner and the shooter were the same person. The homeowner’s last name raised online sleuths’ hackles, possibly because it is similar to — but spelled differently from — the former Whitestown police chief’s last name.
Our rating: False, Whitestown police debunk rumor
Rolston, Whitestown police chief, debunked these claims in a statement released on Nov. 6.
“No officer — whether currently serving, retired, resigned, terminated, or otherwise affiliated with the Whitestown Metropolitan Police Department or any other police department — resides at or has any personal connection to the location of the incident,” Rolston said in a news release.
Chief Dennis Anderson served as the head of the Whitestown Metropolitan Police Department for 12 years before his 2020 retirement. There is no indication that Curt Andersen and Dennis Anderson are related nor that they know one another.
Curt Andersen worked as a psychiatric nurse for the U.S. Navy for more than 20 years, according to court documents.
The claim: Indiana cleaning woman was at the wrong address
Velázquez and Ríos Pérez were dispatched to a job in Whitestown’s Heritage neighborhood by A&A Quality Cleaning. They were supposed to go to an unoccupied model home recently built behind Andersen’s residence, but Velázquez said a Google Maps link sent by their boss sent them instead to Andersen’s front door.
Early in the investigation, the Whitestown Metropolitan Police Department noted that Ríos Pérez and her husband had mistakenly tried to enter the wrong house.
In an interview with reporters late Nov. 5, Velázquez said he had double-checked the address given to them before the couple exited their vehicle and approached the house.
Our rating: True, mapping error may have contributed to confusion
According to court documents filed on Nov. 17, Velázquez and Ríos Pérez were dispatched to a newly-built model home east of Andersen’s property. The new home is part of Windswept Farms, a Ryan Homes development behind the Heritage subdivision.
A Google Maps link sent by the couple’s boss took them instead to Andersen’s home, the last home in the Heritage subdivision, he said. He told police that they drove in circles a few times, but GPS kept taking them back to Andersen’s house.
Google Maps does not register that a new home has been built behind Andersen’s, showing an open field instead. Satellite images from the Boone County Assessor’s office captured in March 2025 show active construction behind the Andersens’ home, where Windswept Farms’ developers have previously filed plans to build a new road.
Construction on the model home had finished less than a week before the shooting, on Oct. 30, 2025, according to a representative from Ryan Homes who spoke with police.
The claim: Andersen’s address was a mile away from cleaning job address
Some comments on social media have said the distance between the house the couple was supposed to clean and the Andersen home was a mile. The information seems to have originated in an article posted on WIBC’s website, which describes the couple as being “reportedly a full mile away from their intended destination in an entirely different neighborhood.”
Our rating: False
According to Google Maps, Andersen’s home sits at a dead end near the intersection of Red Barn Drive and Maize Lane. But a new road, Gentle Wind Lane, has been built to connect Red Barn Drive with South County Road 700 East. Gentle Wind Lane doesn’t yet appear on Google Maps.
The model home Ríos Pérez and her husband were sent to clean was located along that new road, about a quarter mile east of the Andersen address, and within walking distance of each other.
Before the through-road was built, accessing the model home would have required exiting the subdivision, driving all the south and then approaching via South County Road 700 East, a journey roughly equivalent to a mile.
The model home is part of Windswept Farms, a new subdivision that, according to planning documents, will connect directly to The Heritage.
The claim: Ríos Pérez’s key was in the door when she was shot
Velázquez told police that his wife was shot when they were trying to unlock the door with keys provided by their boss.
Ríos Pérez cycled through different keys for about 30 seconds to one minute before the fatal shot was fired, he said.
Court documents do not state whether a key was physically entered into the door at the moment of the shooting.
Our rating: Maybe, but all parties agree keys were tried
Velázquez, Andersen and Andersen’s wife all told police that keys were being placed in the lock or it sounded like keys were being used in the lock.
Velázquez told police that he and his wife didn’t try to forcefully enter the residence or even knock on the door, as they thought it was a model home with no residents. Andersen, meanwhile, told police the couple was “‘thrusting’ at the front door to get in with what he described as getting more and more aggressive,” according to court documents.
Crime scene investigators collected a set of keys from the porch, but court documents do not specify whether they were recovered from within the door’s lock. There was no sign of forced entry, they wrote, and a layer of dust on the front door was visibly undisturbed.
Velázquez told police that in the past, when house keys didn’t work, he and Ríos Pérez would just call their boss and let him know.
“He didn’t have the opportunity to do so today,” police wrote.
The claim: Ríos Pérez was shot through the front door
In an interview with police, Andersen said he fell asleep upstairs between 2-3 a.m. and several hours later awoke to the sound of “keys, tools, or instrument(s) being used on the front door of the residence.”
Through the windows, he saw two people standing in front of his door and retrieved his gun from a case. He fired a shot from the top of the stairs without announcing himself or giving a warning, he said.
He said he never went downstairs. He “heard a man crying out and weeping” after firing his gun, but didn’t know why, thinking he may have “just scared them or something.”
Our rating: True
Andersen and Andersen’s wife both said the shot was fired from upstairs into the front door.
Crime scene investigators who responded to the scene found a bullet hole in the front door, about 59.5 inches above the doormat. Ríos Pérez was 4’9″, or about 59 inches tall.
The claim: Shooter called 911 after firing gun
Whitestown police were called to the scene of a home invasion, not a shooting, and it was initially unclear if the shooting took place while they were en route.
Our rating: True
Andersen told police that he had his wife call 911 after the shot was fired, according to court documents. While speaking with a dispatcher, he held a phone in his left hand and the gun in his right.
Court documents do not clarify whether Andersen told 911 he had fired a gun prior to officers’ arrival.
The claim: Indiana’s self-defense law will protect the shooter
Under Indiana law, a person is justified in using force — including deadly force — to prevent an unlawful entry into their home. The language of the statute is broad, however, and Boone County Prosecutor Kent Eastwood said its phrasing may need to be reconsidered by lawmakers in the future.
“In Indiana, in order to use self-defense, including ‘stand your ground’, there are two components that are considered. There’s subjective reasonableness and there’s objective reasonableness,” defense attorney Marc Lopez said.
Subjective reasonableness refers to an individual’s perception at the time of the action — it asks whether the person believed their life was in danger, they’d be harmed or their home would be unlawfully entered unless they defended themselves. Objective reasonableness, meanwhile, asks whether a hypothetical reasonable person would have also used force given the same circumstances.
Our rating: Remains to be seen. The shooter has been charged but can raise an affirmative defense in court
Indiana law doesn’t stop a prosecutor from filing charges against someone claiming self defense, but it does allow someone to raise an “affirmative defense” in court. That means the defendant admits to doing what they’re accused of, but argues they were justified under the law.
The defendant is responsible for raising a claim of self-defense, but the burden of proof remains on the prosecution.
In certain cases, deadly force can be seen as reasonable force if the person believes that their life is in danger, or if they believe their home is being unlawfully entered.
“Based upon the particular evidence and circumstances of this case, we have determined that Curt Andersen’s actions do not fall within the legal protections provided by Indiana’s Stand Your Ground law,” Boone County Prosecutor Kent Eastwood said on Nov. 17. “This case is not about undermining the law — it is about applying the law to the facts of this case, and that is what we intend to prove at trial.”
The claim: The Whitestown homeowner hired a high-powered attorney
Guy Relford, one of the state’s most prominent gun rights attorneys, opened the Nov. 8 episode of his weekly radio show by acknowledging that he’d been hired by a “party involved” in the Whitestown shooting. He did not specify his client’s role.
Our rating: True.
Prior to the unveiling of criminal charges, Relford confirmed to IndyStar that he had been hired to represent the homeowners as the prosecutor’s office deliberated its decision to file charges. He declined to identify his clients by name at that time.
Online court records show that Andersen has officially retained Relford as his defense attorney. An initial hearing is scheduled for at 10 a.m. Nov. 21.
Relford discussed the charges on WIBC’s Hammer and Nigel Show on Nov. 17, maintaining that Andersen’s actions were justified under the law.
Read the court documents filed in the Whitestown, Indiana, shooting
Noe Padilla is a public safety reporter for IndyStar. Contact him at npadilla@indystar.com, follow him on X @1NoePadilla or on Bluesky @noepadilla.bsky.social. Ryan Murphy is the communities reporter for IndyStar. She can be reached at rhmurphy@indystar.com. Jade Jackson is a public safety reporter for the Indianapolis Star. You can email her at Jade.Jackson@IndyStar.com and follow her on X, formerly Twitter @IAMJADEJACKSON.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Separating fact, fiction in Whitestown shooting of Maria Florinda Ríos Pérez de Velázquez
Reporting by Noe Padilla, Ryan Murphy and Jade Jackson, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
