An 85-year-old white man named Andrew Lester was charged with armed assault after shooting a black teenager named Ralph Yarl twice in Kansas City, Missouri. Yarl was on his way to pick up his younger brothers from a play date but accidentally rang the doorbell at the wrong house. Lester is currently not in custody but there is an arrest warrant for him.
Yarl was released from the hospital and is now recovering at home. The documents charging Lester say that no words were exchanged before he opened fire. Civil rights groups are asking to look into the incident’s racial aspect and protests and public outrage have mounted following the incident at both local and national level, with Vice President Kamala Harris also weighing in.
The prominent civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump is representing the Yarl family and said that it is hard not to consider the “racial dynamics” of the incident. Stacey Graves, chief of the Kansas City police, defended the release of Lester but acknowledged that the case has caused a lot of frustration among the people. Yarl suffered a fractured skull, a traumatic brain injury involving swelling, post-concussive syndrome and injuries to his arm.
