1 year ago
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The shooting of a Black teenager who went to the wrong house to pick up his younger twin brothers from a play date is under investigation by authorities in Missouri, amid growing outrage that the homeowner who wounded him was released by police.
Ralph Yarl, 16, was in a stable condition in hospital in Kansas City on Monday. Reports said he was shot at least twice on Thursday night, first through the front door of the house and a second time when he lay wounded on the ground.
At a press conference on Sunday, Stacey Graves, chief of the Kansas City police department, defended the release of the unnamed homeowner, citing Missouri law that states a person can be held only 24 hours before being formally charged or released.
But she said her department was working quickly to prepare evidence for the Clay county prosecutor as its felony investigation continued.
“We recognise the frustration this can cause,” Graves said. “I want everyone to know that I am listening, and I understand the concern we are receiving from the community.”
Graves acknowledged hundreds of protesters who gathered outside the home where the youth was shot, carrying placards with statements including “Ringing a doorbell is not a crime”.
The police chief said detectives were also looking into whether the homeowner was protected by stand your ground laws, regarding self-defence. She did not confirm how many times Yarl was shot, or where his injuries were.
The civil rights attorney Ben Crump, representing Yarl’s family, called for the homeowner to be arrested and prosecuted for “this horrendous and unjustifiable shooting”.
“You can’t just shoot people without having justification when somebody comes knocking on your door, and knocking on your door is not justification. This guy should be charged,” Crump told the Kansas City Star.
He also countered Graves’s assertion that while she recognised “racial components” of the incident, “the information we have now does not say that that is racially motivated”. The homeowner’s identity and race were not immediately released.
“It is inescapable not to acknowledge the racial dynamics at play,” Crump said.
According to his family, Yarl, a high school junior with a passion for music, was given the address to pick up his brothers but mistakenly went to a house on 115th Street instead of 115th Terrace and was shot after knocking at the door.
Graves said police had not yet been able to get a victim statement because of Yarl’s injuries.
Faith Spoonmore, the teen’s aunt, was among protesters on Sunday. She said the homeowner “opened the door, looked my nephew in the eye, and shot him in the head”.
She said he was shot a second time after he fell to the ground, was able to get up and run away, and knocked at three different homes before someone helped him.
“Even though he is doing well physically, he has a long road ahead mentally and emotionally,” she wrote in a GoFundMe appeal to raise money for medical bills and other expenses.
By Monday the appeal had surpassed $800,000.
Quinton Lucas, the mayor of Kansas City, said members of the police department attended the protest to listen to community concerns.
“This is not something that has been dismissed, marginalised or diminished in any way. This is something that is getting the full attention of the Kansas City police department,” Lucas said.
Yarl’s family has also retained Lee Merritt, a Texas-based civil rights attorney who represented the family of Cameron Lamb, a Black citizen fatally shot by a Kansas City detective, Eric DeValkenaere, in 2019 in a traffic stop.
DeValkenaere was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to six years in prison.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
English (US)