KANSAS CITY EXPLOSION: 84-YEAR-OLD WHITE MAN WHO SHOT BLACK TEEN FOR RINGING DOORBELL IS FREE ON BAIL
An 84-year-old man is walking free tonight after he turned himself in for shooting a Black teenager in the HEAD for simply ringing the wrong doorbell. Andrew Lester posted a $200,000 bond and went home just hours after being booked on felony assault charges. The victim, 16-year-old Ralph Yarl, is fighting for his life at home.
Officials admit Lester was questioned and RELEASED THE SAME NIGHT of the April 13th shooting. He spent less than two hours in custody. “I share the outrage,” said Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas. WHY was a man who admitted to firing through a locked door at an unarmed child allowed to sleep in his own bed? The victim’s attorney, Ben Crump, puts it bluntly: “Nobody can tell us if the roles were reversed… that he would not be arrested.”
Lester claims he was “scared to death” by the teen’s size—a boy his family says isn’t even six feet tall or 170 pounds. Police documents state Lester fired twice, hitting Yarl in the head and arm as he lay on the ground. The shooter claims he saw Yarl pulling on a door handle. The surviving victim told police HE NEVER TOUCHED THE DOOR.
This is a pattern, not an accident. The mayor stated plainly: “This boy was shot because he was existing while Black.” The prosecutor says there is “a racial component.” It echoes the killings of Trayvon Martin and Ahmaud Arbery—Black males gunned down by men who claimed fear.
While the shooter rests at home, a gifted musician and honors student faces a lifetime of trauma. His family’s fight for justice is just beginning, while the man accused of pulling the trigger enjoys his freedom. The system showed its speed in releasing a shooter, and its brutal slowness in delivering justice.
A child’s blood was on a neighbor’s doorstep, and the man who spilled it is already free.
Edited for Kayitsi.com
Author: Kayitsi.com
