Personal Defense Tip: Do Not Shoot Through Doors

According to ye olde English verbiage, your home is your castle. And yes, I’m talking about the Castle Doctrine, something we’re all at least passingly familiar with. Some four hundred years ago, an English jurist made the written statement that “the house of every one is to him his Castle and Fortress as well for defence against injury and violence, as for his repose” (spelling is his because, well, British). He said it, you read it, and there’s some version of it codified into law in every state.

Game on, right? Wrong…which is what some guy in Indiana recently discovered . . .

Authorities are considering whether to charge an Indiana homeowner who they say shot and killed a woman working as a house cleaner after she mistakenly went to the wrong address.

Police officers found 32-year-old Maria Florinda Rios Perez dead just before 7 a.m. Wednesday on the front porch of the home in Whitestown, an Indianapolis suburb of about 10,000 people, according to a police news release. She was part of a cleaning crew that had gone to the wrong address, the release said. 

The homeowner apparently believed themselves to be in danger and acted accordingly. Apparently. But there’s more—there’s always more . . .

[The homeowner Curt] Andersen shot her through the front door with no warning about a minute after hearing someone trying to unlock the door, according to a probable cause statement.

So he heard someone trying to get in and opened fire. Through the door. Without a verbal warning.

Unsurprisingly, Andersen’s been charged with voluntary manslaughter. He’s retained an attorney, Guy Relford, who specializes in Second Amendment cases and even hosts a weekly talk show called The Gun Guy.

Relford is also a firearms instructor and a quick bio check shows he’s an NRA-certified firearms instructor and range safety officer. To summarize, Relford’s public statement regarding this case is that he believes Andersen’s actions are being unfairly judged (check out the post on his Facebook page below) . . .

We’re going to hit the brakes here and remind everyone that no one here is an attorney. I am not an attorney, this is not legal advice, and what I’m about to write is based on the sparse details the mainstream media have thrown out there so far. You’re still welcome to fight me in the comments as always.

Media reports say Andersen opened fire with a GLOCK 48 and shot through his front door. As for the housecleaner on the other side, some news reports are fast to report the victim as being a 4’11” woman. However, she wasn’t alone, she was with her husband. Her husband stated they believed they were cleaning a model home. It appears the incident took place at around 7:00am.

From here on out, we’re going to discuss this as a case of someone taking a shot through a locked front door, acknowledging there could be mitigating factors in this specific case that we don’t know about (aliens? I don’t know).

For this to be considered a good shoot, certain key legal standards must be met. We don’t have the time to lay out every facet of AOJ—ability, opportunity, and jeopardy—so I’m going to do this crayons-and-construction-paper style. All three parts of AOJ must be met, meaning the supposed attacker must have the ability to cause grievous bodily harm (with or without a weapon) and the opportunity to follow through with that (for example, being close enough to present an immediate, credible threat). As for jeopardy, that’s the measure of whether a reasonable person would believe the potential attacker displayed manifest intent to do the defender harm. Basically, your bad guy needs to have the knife (or the unarmed ability due to something like disparity of force), be close enough to use it to kill you, and display the intent to do you harm.

Here’s what the AP reports the probable cause statement says . . .

…Andersen told investigators that he and his wife were asleep in an upstairs bedroom when he heard a “commotion at the door” that grew more intense. He thought someone was using keys or tools on the front door.

Frightened, he went to the top of the stairwell and saw through the home’s windows that two people were outside the front door. He said to himself, “What am I going to do? It’s not going away and I have to do something now.”

He said he loaded his handgun, went back to the windows and saw the people “thrusting” at the door and getting more aggressive, according to the statement.

He fired one shot toward the door. He said the door never opened and he didn’t announce himself or say anything before he pulled the trigger.

Side note: Andersen’s wife ran her mouth as well, and it’s not going to help him at all . . .

Andersen’s wife, Yoshie Andersen, told investigators that her husband told her that he told a neighbor if anyone tried to break into his house he would shoot them. The probable cause statement does not say when this conversation happened.

Come on, guys. Don’t make me remind you about running your mouth in real life or on social media. And please, make sure your spouse also understands not to talk to the media or police without an attorney because…wow.

Is shooting through the front door covered by AOJ standard? As the circumstances are being reported by the media, the answer certainly seems to be no. The door was locked, the housecleaners were trying to unlock it using a key for a model home that wouldn’t work, and the homeowner and his wife had retreated to a “safe room” within the house while calling 911.

Is it possible there are additional circumstances none of us know about here? Of course, but the issue at hand here is shooting through a locked door.

The totality of the circumstances come into play, and that only applies to the things the homeowner knew at that time. Presumably he didn’t know they were housecleaners (no idea where their vehicle was parked or how it was marked). He only knew two individuals were at his front door trying to get in and depending on precisely how close to 7:ooam it was, it may have still been fairly dark.

He chose to shoot through the door.

We all remember that one time Joe Biden advised people to get a shotgun and shoot through their doors. The reaction among knowledgeable gun owners was to laugh, but there were still some who felt this was a reasonable and proportionate response to a perceived threat.

The “logic” behind it is that your home is your castle and, in Indiana, where this occurred, there’s no duty to retreat. That means the homeowner wasn’t legally required to leave the area, but was instead legally allowed to use force to protect himself and his wife, assuming there was an immediate, credible threat…which brings us back to AOJ.

Back to that locked door.

Don’t shoot through doors, people. The circumstances in which that’s a legally justified action carried out by a reasonable, prudent person are incredibly narrow.

I’m going to say it again for the guys in the back who’re busy polishing the Punisher logos on their GLOCKs: do not shoot through doors. I don’t care what you saw in a John Wick movie, what incarnation of John Wayne you believe you are, or what your concealed carry permit instructor told you. We don’t shoot through locked doors.

If you go off half-cocked and do something as questionable as shooting and killing someone through the locked front door of your house, expect to see your actions questioned here (and elsewhere)

Fear is a powerful thing and it has a tendency to overpower logic. It’s vitally important to understand the totality of the circumstances here and that they include a locked door (with no one smashing their way through). It’s also critically important that you properly identify the target (porch lights, cameras). These situations usually happen fast, and you’re going to be forced to choose your actions in a matter of seconds. Are those actions reasonable? Are they defensible? Are they logical at all?

Do me a favor and don’t shoot through doors unless you’re Frankenstein’s monster and the mob outside has Molotov cocktails. Make good choices, boys and girls, or you’re going to find yourself wearing fluorescent orange and going bankrupt over legal fees.