This week, Ralph Yarl starts his senior year. Next week, he’ll face the man who shot him
Faith Spoonmore texted her nephew, Ralph Yarl, on Tuesday to ask how the first day of senior year was going. She hasn’t heard back, which she said is a good sign.
“He was ready. Ralph was ready to just go back to just being a teenager,” she said of the 17-year-old Staley High Schooler.
Four months ago, Yarl was shot twice — in the head and the arm — after the teen mistakenly went to the wrong Northland home while trying to pick up his younger brothers from a similar address one street over.
The Kansas City homeowner who is alleged to have shot him, Andrew D. Lester, 84, who is white, was charged with first-degree assault and armed criminal action in the shooting of Yarl, who is Black.
The case grabbed international attention almost immediately as politicians, celebrities and even President Joe Biden called for justice for Yarl. The shooting renewed national conversations about racism, and racial bias, both explicit and implicit, and gun rights in the U.S.
Yarl continues to heal from the traumatic brain injury he suffered, and he speaks with a therapist multiple times a week.
He turned 17 in May, celebrating with a Red Lobster seafood feast, a cake adorned with candles and a piñata stuffed with candy.
He went on to have a busy summer.
Yarl and his classmates were invited to an Alicia Keys concert in St. Louis. He completed an engineering internship in Kansas City, and he was gifted his own bass clarinet.
A group of musicians from the United States and Canada started a GoFundMe over the summer to gift Yarl a new professional clarinet, specialized just for him.
“As musicians, we know about the impact that a high quality musical instrument can have on our abilities to express ourselves to the world, and about the life-giving motivation that comes from this,” the fundraiser read. “We also know the unique power that comes when we are supported by our fellow musicians. We’d like to extend both of these gifts to Ralph.”
Yarl was thrilled, his aunt said.
In no time he’ll be off on college tours. They plan to visit the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Michigan, Texas A&M University and Purdue University. He still hopes to study engineering.
But Spoonmore said Yarl’s much-anticipated trip to the White House will likely take the cake. A date has not yet been set, but in April, the president extended an invitation to the family during a phone call with Yarl.
Until then, Yarl is just diving back into normal kid stuff, his aunt said. Band classes, hanging out with friends, driving to school.
The court case
This week, Yarl returned to school. Next week, he’ll face the man who allegedly tried to kill him for the first time since that April 13 night when Yarl said he overheard Lester say: “Don’t come around here.”
Yarl had walked up to Lester’s home in the 1100 block of Northeast 115th Street. He had intended to go to a home one street over, on Northeast 115th Terrace.
During his interview with police, Lester, who is white, accused Yarl of pulling his door handle — an account that is disputed by Yarl and his family — and said he shot him because he was “scared to death” of the tall, Black stranger at his door.
Lee Merritt, a civil rights attorney representing the Yarl family, said the teenager was shot “because he was armed with nothing other than his Black skin.”
Lester wasn’t charged until four days after the shooting.
“It’s scary,” Spoonmore said of the upcoming court date. “In our mind, and in a lot of people’s minds, it’s a simple case and what happened was wrong and it should not have happened and the person that did it should be punished for their actions.”
But she said since Emmett Till was murdered by two white men in 1955, and both men were acquitted by a jury, the justice system has shown time and again that “that the (Black) body is not protected the same way, is not valued the same way.”
“Is this kid going to be reminded that it’s okay for someone to do this to you for ringing a doorbell?” Spoonmore said.
Yarl will have to relive the shooting many times in court before a verdict is eventually reached.
“This is just like a little chip off the iceberg, because this is not even a real trial,” Spoonmore said.
The preliminary hearing is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Aug. 31 at the Clay County Courthouse in Liberty.
In May, a judge agreed to grant a protective order for Lester because of ongoing threats and harassment toward him. That means all discovery in the case will be sealed and will not be accessible to the public. The public, including the media, will still be allowed in the courtroom.
Bracelets for hope
Over the summer, with messages of support pouring in alongside more than $3.4 million raised for Yarl’s family through GoFundMe, Yarl told his aunt he wanted to find a way to give back.
“It’s just amazing that we were able to get that much support, and a lot of other families are not as lucky,” Spoonmore said.
Spoonmore, who already had plans to launch a bracelet company, suggested they donate 25% of the proceeds to families of young victims of racially-motivated gun violence.
Yarl countered with 33%. She agreed.
HOPE by Faith Spoonmore, sourced by female artists in West Africa, launched Monday and was nearly sold out by Tuesday afternoon.
