Ralph Yarl, the 16-year-old boy who was shot and injured after knocking on the wrong front door, has spoken out for the first time since the incident. In an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” he gave chilling details of the events the night of April 13.
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Yarl was going to pick up his 11-year-old twin brothers when he accidentally confused the address for that of 84-year-old Andrew Lester. Yarl told GMA he walked up the driveway, walked up the steps and rang the doorbell noticing three security cameras. Yarl said he wasn’t familiar with the friends his siblings were in the company of so he thought, “maybe this is their house.”
The teen recalled waiting a while on the porch and then suddenly hearing the door open and seeing Lester appear in the doorway. He assumed Lester was the friends’ grandfather, still thinking his brothers were inside the house. However, before he could clarify, things took a drastic turn.
“And then he pulls out his gun and I’m like, ‘Whoa,’ so I back up. He points it at me. So I kind of like brace [myself] and I turn my head. Before that, I’m thinking, ‘There’s no way he’s actually going to shoot right? The door isn’t even open. He’s going to shoot through his glass door, glass is going to get everywhere,’” he said. “Then, it happened.”
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Yarl told Roberts that after he was shot, he was bleeding from his head and was surprised that he was as “alert” as he was. He said that his “instincts took over” and he went looking for help, but according to Yarl, he had to approach multiple homes after the first house he approached declined to help him and locked the door.
“So then I go to the next house across the street. No one answers. And the house to the right of that house, I go there and someone opens the door and tells me to wait for the police,” he said.
Yarl’s mother, Cleo Nagbe, told Roberts that after her son didn’t return from picking up his siblings, she was worried and drove around looking for him. Shortly after, she said she received a phone call from police, telling her that Ralph was shot so she headed straight to the hospital.
The last words Yarl heard before the trigger was pulled was, “Don’t come here ever again.”
Since the incident, the report says Yarl has been in therapy recovering from the mental trauma of the incident. Though he and his family relocated, they still receive letters of support from strangers all around the country.
As for justice, Yarl said Lester should be convicted for the crime he committed. The old man was charged with one count of felony assault in the first degree and one count of armed criminal action. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for Aug 31.
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