Missouri man Andrew Lester pleads guilty to 2023 shooting of Black teen Ralph Yarl
An 86-year-old white man in Kansas City, Missouri, pleaded guilty Friday to second-degree assault in the 2023 shooting of a Black teenager who mistakenly rang his doorbell, according to prosecutors.
Andrew Lester agreed to a plea deal for lesser charges just days before he was expected to face trial for two felony counts of first-degree assault and armed criminal action in the 2023 shooting of 16-year-old Ralph Yarl, who experienced life-threatening injuries but survived.
The charges carry a maximum sentence of seven years in prison, compared with the first-degree charges' maximum sentence of 30 years in prison. Lester’s sentencing hearing is slated for March 7. Clay County prosecutor Zachary Thompson said his team will seek a five-year prison sentence.
The shooting drew national attention and renewed debate about self-defense laws, known as “stand your ground” laws across several states. The laws allow a person to use reasonable force, and deadly force, to protect themselves against home intruders.
“In this courthouse, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter your skin, doesn't matter how much money you have, who your friends are. We are all held equally to account in this courthouse,” Thompson told reporters about the plea deal Friday.
The message, he said, was that “self-defense has reasonable limits” – limits he argued Lester crossed.
What happened?
Then a high school junior, Yarl was going to pick up his younger brother from a friend’s house on April 13, 2023, when he accidentally approached Lester’s house and rang the doorbell instead. Police records show Lester shot through the door and hit Yarl in the forehead and right arm.
Yarl ran to multiple homes nearby for help. He was admitted to the hospital with life-threatening injuries and was released several days later, according to police.
Lester reportedly told police he saw a tall Black male pulling on his locked door and thought someone was trying to break in. He told police he was “scared to death” because of Yarl’s size and his own older age. Lester was “visibly upset and repeatedly expressed concern for the victim,” a police report on the incident said.
Lester was booked for aggravated assault but was released hours later.
Civil rights attorneys Ben Crump and Lee Merritt hired by Yarl’s family criticized the way police handled the case, and Lester was arrested again five days later on April 18. Merritt called for the case to be investigated as a hate crime, but prosecutors never filed such charges.
On Friday, Thompson, the county prosecutor, maintained that there was a “racial component” to the case but that there was no evidence the shooting was racially motivated.
Yarl’s family filed civil a lawsuit against Lester and his homeowner’s association, but dropped the case in October.
In the lawsuit, they said that Yarl has “suffered and sustained permanent injuries” and experienced disability and loss of normal life experiences as a result of the shooting.
Contributing: N'Dea Yancey-Bragg, Thao Nguyen and Eduardo Cuevas