As It Happens6:26Black teen shot in the head after knocking on the wrong door doing ‘exceptionally well’
A 16-year-old boy who was shot in the head after knocking on the wrong door in Kansas City, Mo., is expected to make a full recovery, a lawyer for his family says.
Attorney Lee Merritt shared a picture of himself on Wednesday sitting next to a smiling Ralph Yarl, less than a week after the teen underwent emergency surgery.
“You can see in the picture he is doing exceptionally well for a 16-year-old who was shot in the face less than a week ago,” Merritt told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.
He says Yarl is still having trouble with his speech, movement and cognition from the traumatic brain injury — but he’s getting better and is expected to pull through.
“It’s quite amazing,” Merritt said, noting the boy was shot at blank-point range from less than 1.5 metres away. “I think we’ll be hearing a lot more from Ralph in the future.”
Andrew Lester, the 84-year-old white Kansas City homeowner accused of shooting the Black teenager, pleaded not guilty to first-degree assault and armed criminal action on Wednesday. He turned himself in on Tuesday and has since been released on bond.
‘Criminalization of Blackness’
On April 13 at about 10 p.m., Yarl went to pick up his twin younger brothers but mistakenly went to the wrong house, about a block away, police said.
Prosecutors said that when the teenager rang the bell, Lester shot him twice through a glass door with a .32-calibre revolver, striking him in the head and the forearm.
Lester told police he lives alone and was “scared to death” when he saw a Black male on the porch and thought someone was trying to break in, according to the probable cause statement.
No words were exchanged before the shooting, but afterward, as Yarl got up to run, he heard Lester yell, “Don’t come around here,” the statement said.
Yarl ran to multiple homes asking for help before finding someone who would call the police.
“I heard somebody screaming, ‘Help, help, I’ve been shot!”‘ neighbour James Lynch, who is white, told NBC News. The father of three ran out and found Yarl covered in blood.
Lynch said he checked the boy’s pulse and, when another neighbour came out with towels, helped stem the bleeding until paramedics arrived.
Holding out for federal hate crime charges
Lester could face a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted of first-degree assault. His other charge, armed criminal action, is punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
He made his first court appearance Wednesday. With his attorney at his side, he walked up to the bench with the help of a cane and briefly spoke with the judge, video footage of the session showed.
Lester surrendered to police on Tuesday, one day after he was charged. He was freed later that same day on $200,000 US bail. Conditions of his bond include monitoring of his cellphone, prohibition for possessing weapons “of any type,” and a stipulation that Lester not have contact with Yarl or his family.
Some advocates have called for him to be charged with hate crimes, but Clay County prosecutor Zachary Thompson said first-degree assault is a higher-level state crime with a longer sentence.
Merritt says he’s “content” with the state criminal charges, but is hopeful that federal hate crimes will follow. The U.S. Justice Department has not announced any charges, and did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.
Thompson has also said there was a “racial component” to the shooting — which Merritt says comes down to the fact that “Ralph was assumed to be illegal just by his presence there.”
“If Ralph wasn’t around to tell his side of the story, he would have been some kid trying to break into a home, and an elderly homeowner protecting himself,” the laywer said.
“We have allowed this false narrative about Black criminalization — that started since emancipation in the United States — to fester over years and years and decades until the point where Blackness alone will scare a man to death, in Mr. Lester’s words.”
Merritt noted that Lester was only charged after a national outcry about the shooting, driven by Yarl’s friends and family.
WATCH | Students march on behalf of Ralph Yarl:
A 16-year-old Black teenager is recovering at home in Missouri after he was shot last week when he went to the wrong house to pick up his brothers. An 84-year-old white man is facing two charges.
He said the family has been on “an emotional roller coaster” since the shooting. When they first learned their son had been shot, they thought he was going to die. Then they got the incredible news that he’d pulled through surgery and could come home.
“And then on top of that … the family had to take on the responsibility — before I got involved, before anything like that — [by] telling the world what was happening and asking for help,” Merritt said.
“The community responded to their request, and that has been very gratifying for them. And now they’re in a position where they can really focus on Ralph and healing and coming together.”
Mother describe’s teen’s ‘buckets of tears’
Cleo Nagbe, Yarl’s mother, told CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King that her son is doing “considerably well.”
“Physically, mornings are hard, but his spirits are in a good place. I borrow from his spirits,” she said.
Nagbe said the trauma remains evident. She said her son is “able to communicate mostly when he feels like it, but mostly he just sits there and stares and the buckets of tears just rolls down his eyes.”
“You can see that he is just replaying the situation over and over again, and that just doesn’t stop my tears either,” she said.
Merritt described Yarl — an honour student who plays clarinet in the all-state band — as a “sweet, shy, humble young man.”
“The world has their eyes on him … and what he says to it is, ‘I don’t understand why everyone’s making such a big deal.’ You know, ‘I’m just some kid,'” Merritt said.
“That’s who he is. He is just a really sweet kid. And I believe that God has a purpose for him.”