An octogenarian who shot and injured a teenager who rang the wrong doorbell in Kansas City, Mo., pleaded guilty on Friday to second-degree assault, resolving the case just days before a trial was set to begin.
The man, Andrew D. Lester, 86, had been charged with first-degree assault and armed criminal action in the April 2023 shooting of Ralph Yarl, a high school student who arrived at the wrong house — Mr. Lester’s — while trying to pick up his younger brothers. It was uncertain what sentence Mr. Lester will face after pleading guilty to a less serious charge of second-degree assault.
The shooting of Mr. Yarl led to protests in Kansas City and a national outcry, including an invitation by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for the teenager to visit the White House. It also raised painful questions about race in Kansas City, which has a long history of segregation. Many residents and politicians in the area said they believed that race played a role in the shooting, while the county prosecutor said early on that “there was a racial component to the case.” Mr. Lester is white and Mr. Yarl is Black.
Mr. Lester, who could have been sentenced to life in prison if convicted at trial on the most serious charge he faced, did not dispute shooting Mr. Yarl, who was 16 years old at the time. But months ago, he had pleaded not guilty, and his lawyer had indicated that he would claim self-defense at trial, which was set to begin next week.
The case had originally been scheduled to go trial last year, but those plans were delayed after Mr. Lester’s lawyer, Steven Salmon, raised concerns about his client’s health and described “a marked reduction” in Mr. Lester’s mental acuity in a court filing.
Mr. Salmon said that Mr. Lester had sustained a broken hip while the case was pending and had started having “manifest memory issues relating to pertinent case facts.” But after a delay, the judge ordered the trial to go forward.
The clearest public airing of the case came during a preliminary hearing in 2023, in which Mr. Yarl told the court how he had pulled into a driveway at Mr. Lester’s home, thinking incorrectly that his siblings were inside, then rang the doorbell and waited. When the wooden interior door finally started to open, Mr. Yarl described placing his hand on the glass storm door, only to retreat when he spotted a stranger grasping a gun.
“He holds it up and says, ‘Don’t ever come here again,’” Mr. Yarl said in court.
Mr. Salmon said at the 2023 hearing that the shooting was the tragic product of a “mutual mistake,” in which an old man with health problems found a stranger on his porch late at night and reasonably, if incorrectly, thought that the visitor posed a threat.
“A terrible event occurred,” Mr. Salmon said. “It’s not a criminal event, however.”
But Zachary Thompson, the Clay County prosecutor, told the judge at that hearing that self-defense did not apply in this case.
“You do not have the right to shoot an unarmed kid through a door two times,” Mr. Thompson said at the time.
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