Curt Andersen, 62, posted a $25,000 bond Friday and is expected to be released after spending four nights in custody in connection with the Nov. 5 shooting death of Maria Florinda Rios Perez, 32. Under the conditions set by Boone County Judge Matthew Kincaid, Andersen must wear a GPS monitor and has surrendered his passport, court records show.
Andersen was arrested and booked on suspicion of voluntary manslaughter after Rios Perez, a Guatemalan immigrant working as a house cleaner, was shot outside Andersen’s front door. Police say Andersen fired from the top of an interior stairwell and did not go downstairs to see who was at the door.
Authorities say Rios Perez and her husband were en route to a nearby model home they had been hired to clean when they arrived at the wrong address. The police affidavit supporting Andersen’s arrest quotes Mrs. Andersen as saying she and her husband had never gone to the front door; she said she tried to check but her husband stopped her because he feared the people outside might be armed.
“Mrs. Andersen states that neither she nor her husband had ever gone to the front door,” the affidavit states. “She explained that she attempted to, but he stopped her because he was unsure if the people outside had a gun.”
According to investigators, after Andersen fired the fatal shot he had his wife call 911 and then took the phone himself to report a possible break-in. The affidavit quotes Andersen telling the dispatcher his address and pleading, “please, please, please come, please come, they are trying to get in.” He said he was holding the firearm in his right hand and the phone in his left and that he did not know what to do with the gun.
Even after the dispatcher informed him that officers had arrived, Andersen told the operator he could not see the police and that he remained afraid of the people standing on the porch, the complaint said.
A former neighbor, Brittany Barker, 38, told reporters that Andersen and his wife had lived with a persistent fear of crime that kept them inside their home most days. “He was very paranoid about the world,” Barker said.
Andersen is scheduled to return to Boone County court on Jan. 23. A tentative trial date has been set for March 30. The investigation and court proceedings are ongoing.
