Andrew Lester’s trial date set in shooting of Kansas City teen Ralph Yarl. Here’s when

It will be more than a year until Andrew Lester, 84, stands trial in the shooting of then-16-year-old Ralph Yarl, who he is charged with shooting twice after the student mistakenly showed up on his north Kansas City front porch.

On Wednesday, a jury trial was scheduled for Oct. 7, 2024, at the Clay County Courthouse. Judge David Paul Chamberlain will oversee the trial.

Lester, who is white, has been charged with first-degree assault and armed criminal action in the shooting of Yarl, who is Black, in April.

Other hearings are expected in the meantime, and there is always potential the trial could be pushed to an even later date.

Next fall, Yarl will likely be a freshman in college. The Staley High School senior is planning college visits, including to the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Michigan, Texas A&M University and Purdue University. His family said he hopes to study engineering.

First meeting in court

In late August, Yarl, who is now 17, faced Lester for the first time since the shooting during a preliminary hearing in a Clay County courtroom. The teen was the last to testify during the day-long hearing.

After, Judge Louis Angles ruled that prosecutors presented sufficient evidence to establish probable cause that Lester had committed a crime in the shooting of Yarl.

Evidence was presented and a dozen witnesses testified, including neighbors who either watched from their windows or went outside to help Yarl as he ran from home to home bleeding and asking for help.

Yarl, when asked by the prosecutor how he is doing, said “I feel I have a great support system which is helping me recover and become my true self again.”

Lester’s attorney Stephen Salmon told media after the judge’s decision that the shooting was “a mutual mistake.”

He maintains Lester has a good chance of being acquitted at trial. In his closing remarks, Salmon said “under the (self-defense) law, Mr. Lester didn’t need to wait to be attacked by a stranger in the dark” to shoot.

Clay Clay Prosecutor Zachary Thompson said Lester didn’t have the right to shoot a child through a closed door.

Lester “opened the interior door and within a few brief seconds opened fire on Ralph,” he said.

Activists, politicians and family of the teen have pointed to the case as one of “ringing a doorbell while Black.” It continues to spark conversations about racism, both explicit and implicit, and gun rights in the United States.

The shooting

Shortly before 10 p.m. on April 13, Yarl rang Lester’s doorbell in the 1100 block of Northeast 115th Street in Kansas City’s Northland, where he believed he was picking up his younger twin brothers up early from a sleepover. Yarl had intended to go to a home one street over, on 115th Terrace.

Lester called 911 after he reportedly shot Yarl twice, once in the arm and once the head. His call came in at 9:52 p.m., a minute after a neighbor called.

“I just had somebody ring my damn doorbell ... he wasn’t in my house but I shot him,” he told the operator, describing the person as Black and 6 feet tall. Yarl is actually about two inches shorter.

“He was at my door trying to get in, and I shot him ... ” Lester said. “That’s all I remember.”

Yarl in his testimony last month said that after he walked onto the porch and rang the doorbell, he saw the main door open, so he started to pull at the storm door, assuming he’d be welcomed in.

Then he said Lester told him, “Don’t come here ever again” and held up a gun.

Yarl said he dropped his hand from the door and stepped backward. Then he said Lester shot him once in the head. Yarl said he fell to the ground, and then Lester shot him again in the arm.