Ralph Yarl, a Kansas City teenager shot in the head and arm allegedly by an elderly homeowner after going to the wrong house to pick up his 11-year-old twin brothers, is speaking out for the first time.
During an interview aired on ABC’s "Good Morning America" Tuesday, the now 17-year-old Yarl sat alongside his mother and recounted to anchor Robin Roberts how on April 13, he went into the driveway, walked up the steps and rang the doorbell and saw "three different cameras, like one looking at the driveway, one on the porch" of the home of 84-year-old Andrew Lester.
"As far as I know, I didn’t know their family at all. Like, I had never even seen their friends or their parents before so maybe, oh well this is their house," Yarl said of his brothers’ friends.
The teen said he mistakenly went to N.E. 115th Street, instead of getting his siblings from N.E. 115th Terrace – located just a block away.
RALPH YARL SHOOTING: KANSAS CITY TEEN SEEN IN FIRST PHOTO SINCE HOSPITAL RELEASE
"I actually wait a long time. I’m just on the porch, so then I hear the door open and I see this old man and I’m assuming of, this must be like their grandpa, and then he pulls out his gun," Yarl, who was 16 at the time of the incident, said. "And I’m like whoa, so then I like back up. He points it at me, so I kinda brace, and I turn my head. Before that I’m thinking there’s no way he’s actually gonna shoot right the door isn’t even open. He's going to shoot through his glass door and glass is going to get everywhere. And then it happened. And I’m on the ground. I fall on the glass, the shattered glass and then before I know it I’m running away shouting ‘help me, help me.'"
Yarl was bleeding and said he wondered how it was possible that he had been shot in the head.
"He only said five words. ‘Don’t come here ever again,’ Yarl said of Lester, who the teen said he never met before.
Lester has pleaded not guilty to first-degree assault and armed criminal action in the April 13 shooting.
The 84-year-old admitted that he shot Yarl through the door without warning because he was "scared to death" he was about to be robbed by the person standing at his door.
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He remains free after posting $20,000 — 10% of his $200,000 bond.
The shooting drew international attention amid claims that Lester received preferential treatment from investigators after he shot Yarl. President Biden and several celebrities issued statements calling for justice. Yarl’s attorney, Lee Merritt, has called for the shooting to be investigated as a hate crime.
Yarl’s mother, Cleo Nagbe, said on "Good Morning America" that she had been worried that her son got a flat tire, but that she then got a call from police telling her about the shooting, and she headed to the hospital. He was partially alert, but it was traumatizing, she said.
Ten weeks later, Yarl is physically recovered but said that he has headaches and trouble sleeping and that sometimes his mind is just foggy.
"You’re looking at a kid that took the SAT when he was in eighth grade – and now his brain is slowed," Nagbe told Roberts. "So physically he looks fine. But there’s a lot that has been taken from him." Yarl said he is seeing a therapist and hopes to continue his recovery by focusing on his passions for chemical engineering and for music.
"I’m just a kid and not larger than life because this happened to me," Yarl said. "I’m just going to keep doing all the stuff that makes me happy. And just living my life the best I can, and not let this bother me."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
