The grandson of the Kansas City, Missouri man accused of shooting an unarmed Black teenager in the head and arm says his grandfather “holds racist tendencies” and watches Fox News around the clock.
Andrew Lester, 84, pleaded not guilty to two felonies Wednesday: first-degree assault, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison, and armed criminal action. Lester allegedly shot 16-year-old Ralph Yarl through his home’s glass door when Yarl mistakenly went to his home while trying to pick up his twin brothers on the night of April 13.
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In an interview with CNN’s Don Lemon Thursday morning, Lester’s grandson, Klint Ludwig, said he’s “disgusted” by the shooting and stands with Yarl.
“This country, it happens over and over again where people get away with killing unarmed innocent Black people,” he said.
Ludwig said his grandfather’s “racist tendencies” have been reinforced by his media diet.
“He was fully into that and watched Fox News all day every day blaring in his living room and I think that stuff really kind of reinforces this negative view of minority groups,”
“He’s just a stock, American Christian male, older, that’s just how they are,” he continued. “The conspiracies and weird random racist things that they say.”
Ludwig said he pushed back on his grandfather’s racist ideas and conspiracies, including about election theft, infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci, and “something about Black women getting abortions.” He said they’ve subsequently lost touch.
According to a probable cause document, Lester claimed he was “scared to death” by Yarl’s size and thought his home was being broken into, CNN reported. Yarl is five-foot-eight and 140 pounds, his family told the Washington Post.
While Yarl’s community has rallied around him, with students from his school marching for him and his crowdfunder raising over $3 million, his parents said he’s been crying and replaying the shooting in his mind since being released from the hospital.
Yarl “just sits there and stares and the buckets of tears just rolls down his eyes,” his mother Cleo Nagbe told CBS’ Gayle King Tuesday.
“You can see that he is just replaying the situation over and over again. And that just doesn’t stop my tears either, because when you see your kid just sits there and constantly he just, tears are just rolling from both sides of his eyes, there’s nothing you can say to him.”
Yarl’s one of a string of shootings in recent days involving young people facing gun violence over harmless mistakes or misunderstandings. Earlier this week, two cheerleaders were shot after accidentally getting into the wrong car. A 20-year-old woman was shot dead in upstate New York over the weekend when she turned into the wrong driveway. And there’s a manhunt for a North Carolina man who allegedly shot a six-year-old girl and her parents when a basketball rolled into his yard.
