US man charged with shooting Black teen pleads not guilty

Andrew Lester, 84, is charged with first-degree assault and armed criminal charges for the shooting of 16-year-old Ralph Yarl.

An 84-year-old white man accused of shooting and wounding a black teenager who accidentally walked to his home has pleaded not guilty at his first trial in the United States.

Kansas City resident Andrew Lester appeared during a brief arraignment in a courtroom in Missouri’s Clay County, online court records show.

He faces a charge of first-degree assault, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison, and a charge of armed criminal action, punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

The case gained national attention after Lester shot 16-year-old Ralph Yarl on the doorstep of his suburban home last Thursday night. Yarl’s family has maintained that the high school student had simply arrived at the wrong house while searching for his two younger siblings.

Despite being shot in the head and arm, Yarl is expected to make a full recovery, Shaun King, an author and civil rights activist advising the family, said Wednesday.

“He’s home and looking great. Ralph is a WALKING WONDER with a head of steel,” King wrote in an Instagram post that included a photo of the teen with his attorney, Lee Merritt.

⁣ “Ralph suffered a traumatic brain injury from which he is still recovering. If the bullet had hit his head a fraction of an inch in a different direction, he would probably be dead by now.

The White House announced earlier this week that President Joe Biden spoke with Yarl and “shared his hopes for a speedy recovery.” King said the phone conversation between the president and the teen was a “beautiful, thoughtful, meaningful and compassionate conversation.”

The fateful encounter occurred as Yarl approached Lester’s home at around 10 p.m. local time. His younger siblings were in a nearby house with a similar address, according to authorities.

Lester fired two shots through a glass door with a .32-caliber revolver, prosecutors said. Yarl did not cross the threshold and it was not believed that words had been exchanged before the gunfire, Clay County prosecutor Zachary Thompson said.

However, local media reported, citing court documents, that Yarl said during a police interview at the hospital that Lester told him, “Don’t come over here.”

The case came under scrutiny early on, with activists questioning why Lester was released soon after the incident and charged only four days later.

Lester was initially taken into custody, held 24 hours a day for investigation, then released pending an interview with Yarl and the collection of forensic evidence. His prompt release sparked days of protests.

Lester surrendered to police on Tuesday but was subsequently released on $200,000 bail.

With his lawyer by his side, Lester walked to the bench with a cane on Wednesday and briefly spoke to the judge, video footage of the hearing showed.

Thompson has said the case has “a racial component”, without elaborating further. Prosecutors have not filed any hate crime charges, which carry lesser sentences in Missouri than the two counts Lester faces.

Gwen Grant, the CEO of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City, said the group would advocate for a federal hate crime investigation.

“We have a race problem in Missouri and Kansas City in the United States. Clearly, it all points to the fact that black people in America face this kind of racism and discrimination on a daily basis,” Grant told Al Jazeera earlier this week.

In a similar case, a New York state homeowner fatally injured a 20-year-old woman on Saturday when she drove into the wrong driveway while looking for a friend’s house.

Two Texas cheerleaders were also gunned down northeast of Austin, Texas, after getting into the wrong car in a supermarket parking lot early Tuesday morning. The shooters have been charged with felonies in both the New York and Texas incidents.