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Court documents shed light on Indiana shooting that sparked stand-your-ground debate
Boone County Prosecutor Kent Eastwood announces charges against Whitestown homeowner
Boone County Prosecutor Kent Eastwood announces charges against Whitestown man who shot Maria Florinda Ríos Pérez de Velasquez.
The 62-year-old man who shot and killed a house cleaner who mistakenly arrived at his Whitestown home has been charged with voluntary manslaughter.
Boone County Prosecutor Kent Eastwood has charged Curt Andersen with a Level 2 felony in the Nov. 5 shooting death of Maria Florinda Ríos Pérez de Velázquez, a 32-year-old wife and mother of four, after she showed up for a housekeeping job.
The charge, announced Nov. 17, is a step below murder and means investigators believe Andersen “knowingly or intentionally” killed Ríos Pérez “while acting under sudden heat,” according to Indiana law.
Officials said they believe in and strive to uphold Indiana’s “Stand Your Ground” law that protects a person’s right to self-defense. But in this case they “determined that Curt Andersen’s actions do not fall within the legal protections” offered by that statute.
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 found.
His defense attorney, prominent Indiana 2nd Amendment lawyer Guy Relford, disagreed with the charge being filed and said on social media he “[looks] forward to proving in court that his actions were fully justified by the ‘castle doctrine’ provision of Indiana’s self-defense law.”
What the probable cause affidavit filed in Whitestown shooting says
Andersen told police that he went to bed around 2-3 a.m. Nov. 5 and woke up a few hours later when he heard commotion at the front door of his home on Maize Lane in Whitestown, according to charging documents.
He walked from the second-floor loft where he and his wife were sleeping to the top of an indoor stairwell. Looking through his front windows, he saw two people outside who appeared to be trying to open the door.
“Oh no, this is happening and they are going to get in,” Andersen told police he said aloud. “What am I going to do? It’s not going away and I have to do something now.”
Andersen had prepared for what he would do if someone broke into his home by watching videos and trading in his handgun for a Glock 48 9mm handgun this September, he told police. He said he had never fired the new weapon and bought it solely to protect his home.
While he retrieved the gun from a lockbox, the noises outside his door seemed to intensify and “terrified him.” He told officers that 10-15 seconds after he finished loading the gun, he stood at the top of the stairs and pulled the trigger.
He fired one round through the closed front door. He did not announce himself beforehand, he said. Moments later, Andersen and his wife both heard a man crying out and weeping on the front porch, they told police.
After the shooting his wife called 911, and Whitestown Metropolitan Police Department officers were dispatched to the home at 6:50 a.m. They found Mauricio Velázquez kneeling over the body of his wife next to a large pool of blood on the front porch. A bullet had ripped a hole through the front door and struck the woman in the right side of her head, police say.
Andersen’s wife told police that neither she nor her husband had gone to the front door. She told police she had tried, but her husband stopped her because he worried the people outside might have a gun.
How the cleaners got the house wrong
Ríos Pérez and her husband were scheduled 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.
Velázquez told investigators that he and his wife, both Guatemalan immigrants whose primary language is Spanish, had received an address from their boss that brought them to Andersen’s home when they entered it into the GPS. They believed it was a model home without any residents. When police entered the address into Google Maps, the directions led to the recently built house just east and behind Andersen’s home.
Ríos Pérez was trying to unlock the front door with a key they were given when the gunshot rang out. 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,” police state, “but he didn’t have the opportunity to do so today.”
After initially refusing a police order to exit the home, Andersen and his wife walked out the back door and were detained. Ríos Pérez was pronounced dead at the scene.
When police told Andersen that Ríos Pérez was part of a cleaning crew who went to the wrong address, he “became upset and immediately put his head down on the table.” He told police he “didn’t mean for anything to happen to anybody.”
Hours after the shooting and the interrogation, officers took Andersen home and he reenacted the events.
Email Indianapolis City Hall Reporter Jordan Smith at JTsmith@gannett.com. Follow him on X: @jordantsmith09
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Inside Trump’s Touring Exhibition of American Heroes
The museums, designed by conservative nonprofits and Trump appointees, tell the story of early America, from colonization to revolution. The one exhibition looking beyond the early years is the “Wall of American Heroes.” It is a list of 51 people, chosen to illustrate 250 years of American history.
A White House spokesman said they were “individuals who shaped this nation’s history, culture and spirit across generations.”
The people pictured on this national honor roll — and the people left out — help illustrate what this administration sees as the highlights of American history.
Amid the administration’s efforts to reshape the nation’s relationship with its past, Trump appointees heavily weighted the list toward a single era of American history — and a few specific kinds of hero.
The other exhibitions in the Freedom Trucks were crafted by a pair of conservative nonprofits, PragerU and Hillsdale College. But the “Wall of American Heroes” was created by Freedom 250, a nonprofit effort whose leaders were chosen by President Trump and that was created to lead the planning of celebrations of the nation’s 250th birthday, overshadowing a bipartisan congressional commission.
A spokeswoman for Freedom 250 said Mr. Trump was not directly involved in the selection of those featured.
But the list clearly tracks Mr. Trump’s own lifetime and the heroes of the conservative political movement.
The wall’s tilt toward heroes of the baby boomer generation, for instance, extends beyond Hollywood stars and musicians. Of the four religious leaders on the list, two — Archbishop Fulton Sheen and the Rev. Billy Graham — also appeared on TV regularly in the 1950s and 1960s. The only painter on the list is Norman Rockwell, known for his idealized depictions of American life in that period.
By contrast, there is only a handful of figures from the first decades of American independence.
“That’s a disservice, if your intention is to present the last 250 years,” said Sarah Weicksel, the executive director of the American Historical Association. “Because all of the people on this list are building on the work and struggles and progress that was made by the people in the 150 years prior.”
The “Wall of American Heroes” was inspired by a similar display in a traveling museum created by the State of Virginia. But Virginia’s display celebrates little-known historical figures.
Mr. Trump’s, by and large, celebrates people who are already well-known — and, often, people who were famous in their own time. For example, it praises P.T. Barnum, a circus impresario who used hoaxes and freak shows to draw crowds. The wall calls him an “icon of American sensationalism.”
The spokeswoman for Freedom 250 said that many of the names on the wall were drawn from a list of 250 people that Mr. Trump wants to include in a “Garden of American Heroes” in Washington.
The spokeswoman declined to say what criteria were used to narrow down the list.
The only president whose name appears on the wall — not on the list of heroes, but alongside his quotation — is Mr. Trump himself.
Explore the Wall of Heroes
Navigate the display by dragging from side to side.
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GOP Rep. Tom Kean, missing from Congress for months, set to return on June 30
Washington — Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey will return to Congress on June 30, his spokesperson said, after being away since March in an unexplained absence that has confounded Capitol Hill.
“Congressman Kean is eager to return to in person work on June 30 and resume a full schedule,” Kean’s spokesperson, Harrison Neely, told CBS News on Thursday. The New Jersey Globe first reported on his return date.
Kean’s whereabouts since he last voted on March 5 have not been disclosed. When he first made a statement about the absence in late April, the New Jersey Republican said he was addressing a “personal medical issue.”
Kean said earlier this month that he would return to Washington within a matter of weeks, at which point he would provide more details about his health.
“Right now I am focused on my recovery and under the advice of healthcare professionals, I will transition from virtual work to in person work within a matter of weeks. At that time I will be completely transparent as to the nature of my medical condition,” Kean said in a June 2 statement released by his campaign.
The statement came hours before polls closed in New Jersey’s GOP primary for his seat, in which he ran unopposed.
He has missed more than 130 votes during his absence.
House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters earlier this month that he had recently spoken with Kean. Johnson said he was aware of the health issue, but would not disclose the details.
“What he’s dealing with is not very common and not a big thing,” Johnson said.
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