Ralph Yarl, a 16-year-old Black high school student, accidentally rang the doorbell of a home in Kansas City's Northland last week and was shot twice by the home's resident, a white 84 year-old man named Andrew Lester.
Yarl was trying to pick up his twin brothers from their friend's house but arrived at the wrong address. Miraculously, he is expected to make a full recovery, despite one of the two shots hitting him in the head.
The shooting has since gained national attention, with questions circling over law enforcement's handling of the case, the role of Missouri's "Stand Your Ground" law and what it says about racism in the city.
"I think that there will be trouble establishing elements of a hate crime from a legal standpoint," Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas told KCUR's Up To Date. "But had this young man not been Black, I don't think we'd all be sitting here talking about this story right now."
Lucas says he talked to "more than a few" Black parents this week about what happened to Yarl, and he's hearing similar concerns across the board.
"There's been a choice for a lot of parents to make — white and Black — about where they send their kids to school. Particularly for Black parents," said Lucas. "There is always this concern of, well, maybe I go to a school district that has better state test scores and a purportedly safer neighborhood, but what do I lose? And probably the greatest fear a parent can have is exactly what happened to Ralph: that if you move to an environment where your child is a minority, where he's different, is perceived as a threat... Is this what you had to make that sacrifice for? And, is it worth it?"
Lucas joined Up To Date to discuss the Ralph Yarl case as well as the buildup to the 2023 NFL Draft in Kansas City.
