(Reuters) – A Missouri teenager was shot and wounded by a homeowner after the boy mistakenly went to the wrong house to pick up his siblings, police said.
Ralph Yarl, a Black 16-year-old, was recovering in hospital on Monday with gunshot wounds to the head and arm after he knocked on the door of the wrong house just before 10 pm on Thursday, according to his family’s lawyers and police.
Hundreds of protesters on Sunday marched to the house where Yarl was shot chanting “Black Lives Matter” in the state where a “stand-your-ground law” allows homeowners to use physical force to defend themselves against suspected intruders.
The teenager’s parents asked him to pick up his twin siblings at an address on 115th Terrace in Kansas City, but he mistakenly went to a residence on 115th Street where he was shot, police and local media reported.
The homeowner, who was not identified, was taken into custody, placed on a 24-hour investigative hold, then released pending an interview with Yarl and collection of forensic evidence, Kansas City police Chief Stacey Graves told a Sunday news conference.
Lawyers for the wounded boy’s family in a statement said Yarl was shot by a “white male assailant” and demanded “swift action from Clay County prosecutors and law enforcement to identify, arrest and prosecute to the full extent of the law the man responsible for this horrendous and unjustifiable shooting.”
Asked whether the shooting of Yarl may have been racially motivated, Graves said information she had did not say it was, though she was aware of the “racial components” in the case.
Missouri’s stand-your-ground law says a person cannot use deadly force unless they reasonably believe that deadly force is necessary to protect themselves or another person against death or serious physical injury or a forcible felony.
(Reporting By Brendan O’Brien and Andrew Hay; Editing by Donna Bryson and Bill Berkrot)
