Cleaning Woman Killed in Indiana Shooting After Arriving at Wrong Home [View all]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/us/whitestown-indiana-shooting-cleaner-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.zk8.gnV3.foST4AIu6okI&smid=url-share

The shooting of the woman, an immigrant from Guatemala, took place on Wednesday in Indiana, a state with a “stand your ground” law.



The police in Whitestown, Ind., the small but growing town where the shooting took place, said that two residents had been inside the home that morning when the cleaners arrived. The residents believed their home was possibly being broken into and called 911. In the five minutes between the call and when the police arrived, one of the residents fired from inside the home and struck the woman in the head, officials said.

Detectives are now trying to track down exactly what happened, and prosecutors are preparing to review whether to file charges.

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Mr. Ríos Pérez said that his sister and her husband were going to clean a new client’s home on Wednesday. The husband, who later described the moments leading up to the shooting to Mr. Ríos Pérez, said that he had struggled to open the door and that his wife had then taken the keys from him, teasing him for not being able to get it unlocked. Seconds later, she was shot in the head, Mr. Ríos Pérez said.

The family later discovered that the house they had been hired to clean was behind the one they had tried to enter, he said.