Correction: The URL slug for this article originally incorrectly suggested that Yarl had been killed. Raw Story regrets the error, and that URL forwards here.
“We are here because an injustice has happened," voices rang out Sunday as a march began in Kansas City for Ralph Yarl, quoted KMBC's Peyton Headlee on Twitter.
The Kansas Defender reported that a 16-year-old was shot in the head by a white man and, as he lay bleeding, the man shot him again. Yarl ended up at the man's door accidentally on April 13 when he was asked to go pick up his sibling at a friend's house. The house where he was supposed to go was on NE 115th Terrace. Yarl went to NE 115th Street instead.
Yarl ultimately survived his injuries but suffered from traumatic brain injury. He has a scar on his head from where the bullet grazed his skull.
The Defender said that the man was taken to the police headquarters briefly to give a statement and was released without charges. Police Chief Stacey Graves later told reporters that this was standard procedure: "The vast majority of cases—to include violent crime—involved the suspect being released pending further investigation."
The suspect, Ralph Lester, 84, was not considered a flight risk, police said. Lester was charged the following day with first degree assault and armed criminal action.
At the march, family members expressed outrage at the shooting.
“This was not an ‘error’; this was a hate crime," Dr. Faith Spoonmore, Yarl's aunt, told the Defender. "You don’t shoot a child in the head because he rang your doorbell. The fact that the police said it was an ‘error’ is why America is the way it is.”
“This man intended to kill an innocent child simply because he rang the doorbell of the wrong house," Dr. Spoonmore added. "He looked him in the face and shot him… and the individual is free to go about his day as if he did a great deed. While my nephew Ralph Yarl is a great kid, an intelligent kid, a black boy is left with so many broken pieces.”
The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence cites Missouri's "stand your ground" laws that "remove the duty to retreat before using deadly force in defense of self or others in any place a person has a right to be."
The family is asking for help with the legal battle they're about to take on at GoFundMe.
A crowd later amassed outside the shooter's home.
See the videos of the rally below or at the link here:
\u201cA massive crowd has amassed in front of the white man's home who attempted to murder 16 year old Black boy Ralph Yarl in Kansas City Missouri\u201d— The Kansas City Defender (@The Kansas City Defender) 1681679130
\u201cRalph\u2019s aunt is thanking the crowd. She says Ralph is alive and healing. @kmbc\u201d— Peyton Headlee KMBC (@Peyton Headlee KMBC) 1681678637
