![\"Vilma](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/vilma-perez-centre-the-mother-of-migrant-maria-florinda-rios-GER7JLNJDZF3RHETNBEVXH4SOY.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe body of a Guatemalan woman who was killed earlier this month when she went to clean the wrong home in Indiana in the United States was returned to her native country on Monday.<\/p>\n
Mar\u00eda Florinda R\u00edos P\u00e9rez, 32, a mother of four, was killed on the front porch of a home in Whitestown, outside Indianapolis, on November 5.<\/p>\n
Her mother Vilma P\u00e9rez and other relatives received her body at the capital\u2019s international airport and planned to transport it to her hometown of Cabrican, some 200 kilometres west of Guatemala City.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors charged Curt Andersen of Whitestown last week with voluntary manslaughter in connection with her death. Andersen\u2019s trial was scheduled to begin March 30, according to online court records. On Saturday, a judge set bail at US$25,000 (NZ$44,596) and ordered him to surrender his passport.<\/p>\n
According to court documents, R\u00edos and her husband were part of a house cleaning crew and went to Andersen\u2019s house by mistake. As they tried to unlock Andersen\u2019s 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 hurt.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Vilma P\u00e9rez, centre, the mother of migrant Maria Florinda R\u00edos Perez who was killed in Indiana, waits for her body outside La Aurora International Airport in Guatemala City. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n
Andersen told investigators he heard someone trying to unlock his front door and thought someone was trying to break into his home.<\/p>\n
Over the weekend, women in Cabrican cooked food in preparation for friends and relatives who would attend the wake and burial. At her parents\u2019 home, flowers and pictures of R\u00edos adorned an altar. Cabrican sits in a valley where most residents are Mam, an Indigenous Mayan people.<\/p>\n
R\u00edos’ sister, 19-year-old Yeimy Paola R\u00edos P\u00e9rez, said Mar\u00eda had left Guatemala two years earlier with two of her daughters, hiring a smuggler to get them to the US because they were told adults with children were being allowed to enter, her sister said.<\/p>\n
“It was a lot of work going with the girls,” she said. They went to Indiana because five of her siblings and her father were there.<\/p>\n
Yeimy recalled her last conversation with her sister days before she died.<\/p>\n
“She was really happy because there was only a week until her son turned 1 year old and she was getting everything ready to celebrate the boy\u2019s birthday,” Yeimy said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The body of a Guatemalan woman who was killed earlier this month when she went to clean the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[67,42,43,64,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-151698","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-crime-and-justice","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-north-america","12":"tag-top-news","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-topnews","15":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}