White House pushes back after Gov. Parson accuses Biden of politicizing Ralph Yarl shooting

White House press secretary Karine Jean Pierre on Monday pushed back on Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s claim that President Joe Biden politicized the shooting of a 16-year-old high school student in Kansas City who rang the wrong doorbell.

“What the president is doing is trying to protect families and communities across the country,” Jean Pierre said. “That’s the action this president has taken the past two years, doing almost two dozen actions and executive orders to make sure that we are taking steps to stop the epidemic we are seeing with gun violence. And that’s what he should do as president.”

Jean Pierre’s comments come after Parson said Biden was trying to make a political statement by reaching out to Ralph Yarl, a Black student who was shot when he rang the doorbell at Northeast 115th Terrace instead of Northeast 115th Street, where he was supposed to pick up his younger brothers. Yarl’s accused shooter Andrew D. Lester, 84, who is white, faces two felony charges in Clay County for first-degree assault and armed criminal action.

After the shooting became part of a national political conversation about the country’s race relations and gun laws, Biden personally called Yarl to wish him a speedy recovery.

Parson, a Republican who has frequently been critical of Biden, said the president was trying to make a political statement out of the tragedy. Biden has been a staunch supporter of stricter gun laws and has frequently asked Congress to pass legislation that would ban certain guns.

“We have young men and women get killed in St. Louis and Kansas City every day. Does the president of the United States ever call those families and ask them to come there?” Parson said to The Star last week. “Did he call the families in Nashville, Tennessee that lost their kids and ask them to come to the White House?”

Biden spoke with first responders, Nashville Mayor John Cooper and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee after the shooting at a Christian school in Nashville killed three 9-year-old students and three adults. First lady Jill Biden traveled to Nashville to attend a vigil for the victims.

Local activists and community leaders in Kansas City have been asking the federal government to do more about the Northland shooting. Many are concerned that it took the Clay County prosecutor several days to bring charges against Lester. Organizers have asked the Department of Justice to bring federal hate crime charges against Lester. Those charges can bring a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

Kansas City councilwoman Melissa Robinson sent a letter to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Missouri, saying she wanted federal prosecutors to look into the “racial component of the crime” because she believed many in the local community have lost trust in the Kansas City Police Department.

“I’m just concerned about the faith that the community has, the city has, the residents have in the local judicial and law enforcement process,” Robinson told The Star on Monday. She said she wanted the federal government to send a message to the community that hate crimes would not be tolerated.

The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Jean Pierre said Monday that the White House would leave it up to the Department of Justice to decide if it wants to bring charges.

“I’m not going to get ahead of DOJ, that’s something they need to decide,” Jean Pierre said. “We’ve been very clear about Ralph Yarl.”