This awful shooting is being used to peddle divisive racial myths.
It’s a miracle he’s still alive. Sixteen-year-old Ralph Yarl, a schoolboy from Kansas City, Missouri, was shot in the head and arm last Thursday night. He had gone to the wrong address, pulling up outside a house on Northeast 115th Street, instead of Northeast 115th Terrace, which is just a block away. Yarl knocked on the door, expecting his two younger siblings to come running out (he’d been asked by his mother to collect them early from a sleepover). Instead, he was shot at twice by 84-year-old Andrew Lester from the other side of the threshold. Lester claims he feared for his life – and that Yarl was pulling at the door handle (a claim Yarl denies). Incredibly, mercifully, Yarl is not only still with us, but is also expected to make a close-to-full recovery. Lester, meanwhile, has been charged with first-degree assault and armed criminal action. If convicted, he will likely spend the rest of his life in prison.
