Ralph Yarl achieves special honor less than one year after Kansas City shooting
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Ralph Yarl has received a special distinction less than one year after the Kansas City teen was shot when he went to the wrong address.
North Kansas City Schools announced the 17-year-old was named to the 2024 Missouri All-State Band as second chair for bass clarinet.
It’s not the first time the Staley senior has earned the honor.
Family told FOX4 that Yarl, an honors student, has also been named to Missouri All-State Band in previous years and is one of the top bass clarinet players in the state.
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Members of the high school’s jazz band even held a benefit concert for Yarl last year after prosecutors say he was shot by a Northland homeowner.
The Kansas City teenager suffered a traumatic brain injury but was released from the hospital days later. He even completed an engineering internship over the summer and returned to Staley for his senior year in August.
Andrew Lester is facing first-degree assault and armed criminal action charges for allegedly shooting Yarl this past April.
Yarl has previously testified that he went to pick up his siblings but didn’t have his phone — he’d lost it at school. The house he intended to go to was just blocks away, but he got the street wrong.
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The teen said he rang the bell and the wait for someone to answer seemed “longer than normal.”
As the inner door opened, Yarl said he reached out to grab the storm door, assuming it was his brothers’ friends’ parents.
Instead, it was Lester who told him, “Don’t come here ever again,” Yarl recalled. He said he was shot in the head, falling to the ground and was then shot in the arm.
Lester told authorities that he shot Yarl through the door without warning because he was “scared to death” he was about to be robbed.
His attorney is arguing self-defense and that the 85-year-old feared for his life that night.
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Lester was among several neighbors who called 911. On a recording previously played in court, he could be heard telling a dispatcher, “I shot him. He was at my door trying to get in and I shot him.”
Lester has pleaded not guilty, and his attorneys have requested a jury trial, as opposed to a bench trial where a judge would determine his fate. The trial has been scheduled for October 2024. The 85-year-old is scheduled to appear in court again on April 9.
The shooting shocked the country and renewed national debates about gun policies and race in America.
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Missouri is one of about 30 states with laws that say people can respond with physical force when they are threatened.
Clay County prosecutor Zachary Thompson said that although Missouri law offers protections for people defending themselves, “You do not have the right to shoot an unarmed kid through a door.”
