The grandson of the 84-year-old man accused of shooting Black teenager Ralph Yarl said it “never should have happened”.
Ralph, an honors student and all-state band member, was supposed to have gone to 115th Terrace in Kansas City, Missouri to pick up his twin brothers on Thursday.
But he muddled the address and rung the doorbell on 115th Street by mistake, after which he was shot. He suffered gunshot wounds to the left forehead and right arm.
Andrew Lester, 84, surrendered at the Clay County Detention Center a day after being charged with first-degree assault and armed criminal action. He posted bond on Tuesday afternoon.
Some civil rights leaders and the Yarl family’s lawyers have said Mr Lester should be charged with a hate crime. Clay County prosecutor Zachary Thompson said while there was a “racial component” to the case, first-degree assault is a higher-level crime with a longer sentence – up to life in prison.
“It’s just crazy. I wish it didn’t happen,” Daniel Ludwig, Mr Lester’s grandson, told The Daily Beast.
Mr Ludwig, who described himself as “very close” with his grandfather, said he has often been in precisely the same situation as Ralph while looking for homes there.
“I’d go to visit my grandpa, and I would get lost on those streets,” he told the outlet. “It’s easy to do. They all look the same and everything.”
The grandson also said he believed Mr Lester felt he was in danger.
An attorney for the Yarl family said the case should qualify as a hate crime.
“Ralph Yarl was shot because he was armed with nothing but other than his Black skin," he said.
Lee Merritt said the family is also angry that police held Mr Lester for only two hours after the shooting, when they legally could have held him for a day.
“If they would have held him for 24 hours, they would have held him long enough to get the statement from the kid with a bullet in his brain,” Mr Merritt said. “They got the statement the very next day.”
The Yarl family’s lawyers said the Clay County prosecuting attorney, Mr Thompson, “appears sincere in his effort to get a successful conviction”.
“Again, we’re frustrated with law enforcement, the agents working for him, in their failure and denial to get this family due process come last week,” Mr Merritt said. “No one really owned up to that. We confronted them directly; we know the mistakes that have been made. So, that part is still off-putting.”
Although satisfied with the charges brought against the 84-year-old accused, Mr Merritt said the family wants to see it through the sentencing.
“We get that the 16-year-old, unarmed boy didn’t pose a threat but, far too often in America, his skin alone is his weapon. It’s the weaponization of Blackness itself that is what we really feel like this case is about,” Mr Merritt said.
“It’s not only Mr Lester who says he ‘fears for his life’ when he sees Black people. It’s almost every cop who says, ‘I feared for my life,’ as justification for deadly use of force against an unarmed suspect. We hear it every day. We need to address that in our culture. There seems to be an animosity or violence associated with just Blackness alone.”
Additional reporting by agencies
