Missouri Gov. Mike Parson remains silent on Ralph Yarl despite national outrage about shooting

Despite a growing chorus of elected officials who have condemned the shooting of Ralph Yarl, a Black 16-year-old Kansas City student, Missouri’s top statewide official has remained silent.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican whose term ends in 2025, has made no public statements about the shooting of Yarl, who was shot by a white man in the Northland on Thursday after ringing the doorbell at the wrong house while picking up his brothers.

The Republican governor’s office has not responded to two emails from The Star over two days asking to weigh in on the shooting. His silence has persisted even after President Joe Biden spoke with Yarl and his family. Biden on Tuesday announced he had invited Yarl to the White House once he recovers. Vice President Kamala Harris also condemned the shooting on Monday, saying “every child deserves to be safe.”

“It is telling that the President of the United States can make time for a phone call to the family but our governor has yet to release a statement,” said state Rep. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Kansas City Democrat who represents a swath of the Northland.

Nurrenbern urged Parson to reach out to Yarl’s family and the community. If nothing else, Nurrenbern said, he should say he’s praying for Yarl’s recovery and hopes that justice is served.

Parson remained silent on the shooting after he held a meet and greet in his office at 10:15 a.m. Tuesday with members of the Northland Regional Chamber of Commerce.

As governor, Parson has a major role in overseeing Kansas City’s police operations, which is the only Missouri police force under state control. Parson is in charge of appointing four of the five spots on the Board of Police Commissioners. Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas occupies the fifth spot.

House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Springfield Democrat and potential candidate for governor in 2024, told The Star on Tuesday that Parson’s silence wasn’t surprising. She pointed to his support of Missouri’s loose gun laws, saying in a statement that the Republican governor fostered a “climate that made this tragedy possible.”

“As both a lawmaker and a governor, he supported every effort to gut the state’s gun safety laws, despite the opposition of law enforcement, and then shrugged as firearm deaths increased,” the statement said. “The Missouri where a teenage boy is shot just for ringing a doorbell is the Missouri Mike Parson worked to create.”

House Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican, on Tuesday said he believed Parson was being cautious.

“As governor, he wants to be responsible with his comments,” Patterson told The Star. “And to prematurely comment on a situation that we don’t know exactly what happened, I think it’s actually the responsible thing to do.”

Patterson said the shooting was tragic, but would hold his judgment because the public did not know enough about what happened.

“If the kid just rang the doorbell, then I think a crime has been committed and that’s very tragic,” he said. “But I think we really have to know what exactly happened.”

Jean Evans, a former executive director of the Missouri Republican Party, defended Parson’s silence in an interview with The Star on Tuesday, saying it’s unclear whether the governor had been briefed on the shooting, knows the situation or has talked to the prosecutor.

“I sometimes feel like there’s this zealous need for everybody to weigh in on every single issue and get a response immediately and some of us would like to wait and see for the facts,” Evans said. “I do know (Parson) to be somebody who cares very much about kids. And so I am certain that he would empathize with a family whose child has been shot because that’s the kind of person he is.”

However, Parson still had not commented on the shooting after Clay County Prosecutor Zachary Thompson charged the alleged shooter, Andrew D. Lester, on Monday with first-degree assault and armed criminal action.

Lester had surrendered to the Clay County Detention Center and was in custody as of Tuesday afternoon, according to the Clay County Sheriff’s Office.

The Republican governor’s lack of response to the shooting is not necessarily unprecedented. In 2014, then-Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, faced criticism for appearing tentative and weak as tensions escalated between protesters and Ferguson police after the shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, by a white police officer.

After the Clay County prosecutor brought charges against Lester, both of Missouri’s Republican senators weighed in on the shooting. Sen. Josh Hawley Tuesday called the shooting “terrible” and said he supports the decision to prosecute while decrying rising violence across Missouri. Sen. Eric Schmitt said he was praying for the family but would let the prosecution play out before making additional comments.

The shooting has sparked national outrage and brought new scrutiny to Missouri’s gun laws. The GOP-controlled Missouri Senate on Monday held a moment of silence after state Sen. Lauren Arthur, a Kansas City Democrat, asked the chamber to pray for Yarl and his family.

Nurrenbern, the Kansas City Democrat, said Yarl’s shooting was a pivotal moment that needed to unite the state.

“It’s so important that the governor of the state really is the governor for every part of the state and every community in the state,” she said. “Gov. Parson has been to Clay County numerous times. He’s been to our schools. It’s even possible that he’s met this young man along his different journeys and trips.

And so I think it’s important, again, just to have a united front in this —- that we and Missouri do not stand for this type of violence, period.”

The Star’s Daniel Desrochers contributed reporting.