CABRICAN, Guatemala — The body of a Guatemalan woman killed earlier this month while going to clean the wrong house in Indiana, United States, was returned to her homeland on Sunday.
María Florinda Ríos Pérez, 32, a mother of four, was killed on the porch of a home in Whitestown, outside Indianapolis, on November 5.
On Sunday evening, his mother Vilma Pérez and other relatives received his body at the capital’s international airport and planned to transport it to his hometown of Cabrican, about 200 kilometers west of Guatemala City.
Prosecutors charged Curt Andersen of Whitestown last week with voluntary manslaughter in connection with her death. Andersen’s trial was scheduled to begin March 30, according to online court records. On Friday, a judge set bail at $25,000 and ordered him to surrender his passport.
According to court documents, Ríos and her husband were part of a cleaning crew and went to Andersen’s house by mistake. As they attempted to unlock Andersen’s door with a key their company had given them, Andersen fired a shot through the door without warning. The bullet hit Rios in the head. Her husband was not injured.
Andersen told investigators he heard someone trying to unlock his front door and thought someone was trying to break into his house.
Over the weekend, the women of Cabrican prepared food for friends and relatives who would be attending the wake and burial. At her parents’ house, flowers and photos of Ríos adorned an altar. Cabrican lies in a valley where most of the inhabitants are Mam, an indigenous Mayan people.
Ríos’ sister, Yeimy Paola Ríos Pérez, 19, said María left Guatemala two years earlier with two of her daughters, hiring a smuggler to bring them to the United States because they were told adults with children were allowed in, her sister said.
“It was a lot of work with the girls,” she said. They went to Indiana because five of his siblings and his father were there.
Yeimy remembers her last conversation with her sister a few days before her death.
“She was really happy because it was only a week until her son turned 1 and she was preparing everything to celebrate the boy’s birthday,” Yeimy said.
