An Indiana man was charged with manslaughter on Monday in the death of a cleaning woman who was shot when she arrived at the wrong house nearly two weeks ago.

Curt Andersen, 62, of Whitestown, was charged with voluntary manslaughter in the Nov. 5 shooting death of Maria Florinda Ríos Pérez de Velázquez, 32, after she showed up for a housekeeping job at his suburban Indianapolis residence.

If convicted, Andersen could face between 10 and 30 years in prison.

Boone County Prosecutor Kent Eastwood said the charge was filed after a “comprehensive examination.” Anderson said an investigation determined that Andersen’s actions did not fall under the legal protections provided by Indiana’s Stand Your Ground law.

The housekeeper, married and a mother of four, had arrived with her husband before dawn on Nov. 5.

Ríos Pérez de Velásquez and her husband were hired to clean a model home in the same area as Andersen’s property, a representative of Ryan Homes, the builder of the nearby Windswept Farms Subdivision, told police.

According to court documents, Andersen, a former Navy nurse, was sleeping on the second floor of his home when he was awakened by noise at his front door. He told police that he saw two people at the door and believed they were trying to break into the residence.

“Oh no, this is happening and they are going to get in,” Andersen reportedly told police he said to himself, according to court records. “What am I going to do? It’s not going away and I have to do something now.”

Andersen reportedly told police that he grabbed a Glock handgun, then loaded it and went to the top of his stairwell, where he fired one shot at his front door. The bullet pierced the door and struck Ríos Pérez de Velásquez in the head, killing her.

After the shooting, Andersen heard weeping at his front door and told his wife to call 911. Officers with the Whitestown Metropolitan Police Department arrived at the home at 6:50 a.m. ET. They found Mauricio Perez-Velázquez kneeling over his wife’s body on the front porch. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Ríos Pérez de Velásquez was trying to unlock the front door with a key they were given when the gunshot rang out, court documents state. Her husband said they were on the porch between 30 seconds to a minute before the gunshot, while Andersen told police it was “over a minute.”

“Mauricio mentioned that in the past, when the keys wouldn’t work, they would just call his boss and inform him but he didn’t have the opportunity to do so today,” police said.

The facts show that “Curt Andersen fired one shot through a closed locked door from the top of his stairs knowing two individuals were on the other side of the door, fatally striking Maria Florinda Ríos Pérez de Velázquez,” police said.

“I never thought it was a shot, but I realized when my wife took two steps back, she looked like she’d been hit in the head,” Perez-Velasquez told WRTV in Spanish.

The couple are both Guatemalan immigrants and had been cleaning homes for seven months.

“It’s our contention that the person did not have a reasonable belief that that type of force was necessary, given all the facts that he had at that time,” Eastwood said during a news briefing.

Andersen’s attorney, Guy Relford, disagreed with the charge.

In a social media post, he said the death of Ríos Pérez de Velásquez was “a terrible tragedy that is heartbreaking for everyone involved.”

“And while we are disappointed that the Boone County Prosecutor’s Office has elected to file criminal charges against Mr. Curt Andersen, I look forward to proving in court that his actions were fully justified by the “castle doctrine” provision of Indiana’s self-defense law,“ Relford wrote. ”Contrary to the contention of the prosecutor ... we believe Mr. Andersen had every reason to believe his actions were absolutely necessary and fully justified at the time.”

Andersen will appear at an initial hearing on Friday, court records show.

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