Ralph Yarl – update: Andrew Lester’s family ‘disgusted’ by shooting as stand your ground laws in spotlight

Authorities say Robert Louis Singletary, 24, is ‘armed and dangerous’ after incident in North Carolina.

Andrew Lester had already gone to bed when the doorbell rang a little before 10pm. He got up, grabbed a gun and went to check it out.

Seeing a Black male appearing to pull the handle of the front door, police say the 84-year-old white man opened fire. No questions asked.

Mr Lester told police he believed someone was attempting to break into his house.

That belief — though wrong — could become a defense as Mr Lester faces charges of first-degree assault and armed criminal action for shooting 16-year-old Ralph Yarl, an honor student who went to the wrong Kansas City address while attempting to pick up his younger siblings.

The case, which has stirred outrage across the country, could shine a light on one of the most common self-defense policies in the US — the right to protect yourself in your home. Most states have some version of a “castle doctrine,” either by law or court precedent, that says residents don’t have to retreat when threatened in their homes but instead can respond with physical force.

More in this report:

Ralph Yarl’s lawyer Lee Merrit said the teen is “completely humbled” by the outpouring of support.“He says, ‘I don’t know why everyone’s making a big deal out of me’,” Mr Merritt said.

“You know, it’s just me, right? It’s not like the president was shot.”Eliana Brannlund said it has been rough not having her friend and fellow band member around at Staley High School.

“He always brought a lot of positivity and smiles to our band class as well as our rehearsals outside of school,” Brannlund said in an interview with The Associated Press.

“I hope people are able to hear about who Ralph is as a person and understand that he is loving, kind and sweet.”

Ralph was shot at about 10pm last Thursday after his mother asked him to pick up his twin brothers at a home on 115th Terrace, Police Chief Stacey Graves has said.

Shot at point-blank range in the head, he miraculously survived the bullet. Only about 10 to 15 per cent of people who are shot in the head survive, said Dr Christopher Kang, the president of the American College of Emergency Physicians.

Ralph Yarl’s mother has spoken out to reveal that the Black teenager can’t stop crying as he recovers from his injuries after being shot in the head by an 84-year-old white homeowner.

Cleo Nagbe told CBS Mornings’ Gayle King on Tuesday that the 16-year-old is now left replaying Thursday’s attack “over and over again”.

“You can see that he is just replaying the situation over and over again. And that just doesn’t stop my tears either, because when you see your kid just sits there and constantly he just – tears are just rolling from both sides of his eyes, there’s nothing you can say to him,” she said.

She said that her son is able to communicate “when he feels like it” but he mostly “just sits there and stares and the buckets of tears just rolls down his eyes”.

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As Ralph Yarl begins a long road to recovery and Andrew Lester faces the possibility of a life sentence on felony charges, Io Dodds explains what we still don’t know about the shooting.

In the span of six days, four young people across the US have been shot — one fatally — for making one of the most ordinary and unavoidable mistakes in everyday life: showing up at the wrong place.

A man shot and wounded two cheerleaders outside a Texas supermarket early Tuesday after one of them said she mistakenly got into his car thinking it was her own.

A group looking for a friend’s house in upstate New York arrived in the wrong driveway only for one of them to be shot to death Saturday night, authorities said.

In Missouri last Thursday, a Kansas City teen was shot twice after going to the wrong home to pick up his younger brothers, raising questions about the state’s “stand your ground law” and heightening racial tensions.

A brief glance of each shooting and the ensuing criminal investigations in Missouri, New York and Texas:

The Minnesota police officer who shot dead Black man Daunte Wright during a traffic stop is about to be released from prison.

Kim Potter, 50, will walk free from Shakopee Minnesota Correctional Facility on Monday, prison records show after serving 16 months behind bars.

She will serve another eight months on supervised release.

Wright, a 20-year-old Black man and father-of-one, was shot and killed by the Brooklyn Center police officer during a traffic stop in Minnesota on 11 April 2021.

Potter had pulled the man over for expired licence plate tags and an air freshener hanging in his rear-view window. She then tried to arrest him for an outstanding warrant.

When Wright tried to drive away, Potter fired one shot and killed him.

The officer, a 26-year veteran officer, said she mistook her firearm for her Taser.

In America, seemingly any interaction, no matter how innocuous, can end in gun violence.

Consider this month alone. In Kansas City, Ralph Yarl, a Black 16-year-old with dreams of pursuing a career in engineering, was shot at point blank range for ringing the wrong doorbell. A group of young cheerleaders in Texas were shot when one accidentally entered the wrong car in a grocery store parking lot. Kaylin Gillis, 20, was fatally gunned down in rural New York after mistakenly pulling into the wrong driveway. And Kinsley White, a six-year-old from Gastonia, North Carolina, was shot alongside her parents when her basketball rolled into a neighbour’s garden.

Experts say random acts of violence are made worse by so-called “Stand Your Ground” laws, provisions that the US Commission on Civil Rights once dubbed a “license to kill.”

The Independent’s Josh Marcus investigates:

Researchers have said that the shooting of Ralph Yarl shows the “adultification” of Black children and youth.

“This country, unfortunately, has a history of dehumanizing the Black body, the Black family and taking away those freedoms that should be enjoyed by everybody,” said Alison Cooke, a statistician at the UCLA-Duke University National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, told ABC News.

Adultification is where people have racial bias towards Black children viewing them as older and less innocent than they view white children.

For example, people often see Black boys as bigger and more physically threatening than white boys, researchers said.

In the case of Ralph, white homeowner Andrew Lester claims he was “scared to death” because of Ralph’s size.

Ralph’s family dispute that claim, saying he is less than six foot tall.