An 86-year-old man in Kansas City, Missouri, has pleaded guilty to second-degree assault in the shooting of Ralph Yarl, a teen who accidentally went to the wrong address.
According to US media, Andrew Lester agreed to a lesser charge on Friday as part of a plea deal. His trial was scheduled to begin next week.
In April 2023, Ralph Yarl, 16, rang Lester’s doorbell on his way to pick up his younger brothers. Prosecutors claim Lester shot the teen without speaking with him. The boy survived.
His was one of several cases at the time of unarmed people being shot due to misplaced addresses, sparking debate over stand your ground laws in some US states that allow the use of deadly force to prevent death or serious bodily harm.
The case sparked protests and drew attention from civil rights and racial justice activists, who claimed that Ralph Yarl’s race played a role in the shooting. Ralph is Black, and Lester is White.
Police initially claimed there was a “racial component” to the shooting, but they ultimately decided not to charge Lester with a hate crime.
Lester and his lawyers claimed that he was acting in self-defense and believed the teenager was attempting to break into his home.
In a 2023 court appearance, he pleaded not guilty to the assault and armed criminal action charges. If found guilty at trial, he would face life in prison.
He will be sentenced on March 7 for the lesser charge. He faces up to seven years in prison.
“We remain hopeful that his sentencing will not be a slap on the wrist, but rather a decision that acknowledges the gravity of his crime,” the Yarl family said in a statement to local media.
Ralph Yarl told authorities that his mother instructed him to pick up his siblings around 22:00 local time that night. He mixed up similar street names – Northeast 115 Street and Northeast 115th Terrace – and ended up on Lester’s doorstep, about a block from the house he was trying to visit.
Lester shot him twice after he rang the doorbell: once in the forehead, once in the arm. Prosecutors claim that he “did not cross the threshold” of Lester’s home and survived by fleeing to neighboring homes for assistance.
Lester was initially detained by police for questioning before being released without charge, resulting in protests in Kansas City. Lester eventually turned himself in after an arrest warrant was issued.
Ralph Yarl, who has since graduated from high school, is scheduled to give a victim impact statement during a sentencing hearing next month.
The protests, which drew support from celebrities such as Halle Berry, Kerry Washington, and Jennifer Hudson, advocated for racial justice and raised awareness about stand your ground laws. Critics claimed they contributed to gun violence against Black people in the United States.
The case was also one of several in the spring of 2023 in which Americans, many of them children and teenagers, were injured as a result of minor mistakes met with gun violence.
