A Kansas City neighbor who claims she help Ralph Yarl the night he was shot is speaking out.
The woman said she only wants to be identified as Jodi so she can protect her family, but while speaking with KMBC, Jodi revealed that she heard a loud banging on her door and could hear a man yelling for help. Jodi says she contacted 911 and a dispatcher told her not to answer the door because it could be an active shooter outside. “I go, I think he needs help. I need to go out. And she was like, Ma’am, you don’t know where the shooter is,” Jodi said.
Despite the warning for the dispatcher, Jodi says she noticed other neighbors coming to help Yarl as he was laying on the ground. Jodi also says once she went to help Yarl he was able to tell her everything that happened. “I was supposed to pick up my little brothers from their friend’s house. And I went and knocked on the door and the man came to the door with a gun and shot me in the head,” Jodi said Yarl told her.
“He was very alert,” Jodi said. Jodi said one neighbor, who held Yarl’s hand, jumped over a fence to help the teen. Jodi, a medical professional, sent her son inside to get towels to support the wounded teen’s head and to put pressure on his wounds. “Nobody should go through this. That was somebody’s child’s blood I cleaned off the front door,” Jodi said through tears.
As we previously reported, local community members planned a protest Sunday afternoon in a Kansas City neighborhood after a Andrew Lester shot a Ralph Yarl who came to his home by mistake to pick up his siblings. According to Kansas City police, the teen was told by a parent to pick up his siblings Thursday at a residence on 115th Terrace, but he ended up at a home in the 1100 block of 115th Street by mistake. The alleged shooter was brought into a police station to make a statement, and then was later booked in custody but bonded out a $200,000 bond.
An estimated 1500 students from Staley High School in Kansas City, Missouri took part in a march today for their schoolmate, Ralph Yarl, the 16-year-old who was shot after ringing the doorbell at the home of 84-year-old Andrew Lester.
🎥 @KSHB41 pic.twitter.com/YUJ4AbXj3k
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) April 18, 2023
Andrew Lester told police he heard the doorbell ring, picked up his .32 caliber revolver, opened the interior door, “saw a black male,” was “scared to death,” and shot twice within seconds. He was released less than two hours later. https://t.co/XA3XVu5N5y
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) April 18, 2023