1). “Oklahoma sheriff, 2 staffers recorded discussing lynching Black people are suspended from sheriffs' association”, April 18, 2023, Corky Siemaszko, NBC News, at <https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/audio-coming-reporter-taped-oklahoma-leaders-talking-killing-reporters-rcna80299>
2). “Details Emerge in Deadly New York Shooting of Woman in Wrong Driveway”, Apr. 19, 2023, Jesse McKinley, Hurubie Meko & Jay Root, 1,323 words, The New York Times.
3). “Woodlands Elite cheerleaders shot in H-E-B parking lot near Austin, 1 person arrested”, April 18, 2023 Updated: April 19, 2023, Claire Partain, Staff writer, Houston Chronicle, at https://www.houstonchronicle.com/neighborhood/moco/news/article/woodlands-elite-cheerleaders-shot-h-e-b-austin-17904664.php>
4). “2 cheerleaders were shot in a Texas supermarket parking lot after one opened the door to the wrong vehicle. A suspect is under arrest”, April 19, 2023, Alisha Ebrahimji & Tina Burnside, CNN, at <https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/19/us/texas-cheerleaders-woodlands-elite-shooting/index.html>
5). “Struggling to Understand A Shooting in Kansas City”, Apr. 19, 2023, Mitch Smith and Julie Bosman, 1,547 words, The New York Times.
6). “Kaylin, Ralph, and the death of anonymous trust: A reflection on two shootings”, Apr 18, 2023, Anand Giridharadas, The Ink, at < https://the.ink/p/kaylin-ralph-and-the-death-of-anonymous >
~~ recommended by dmorista ~~
Introduction by dmorista: We see, in the main, two types of violence used by the American Ruling class; to maintain their dominant class position in final years of U.S. Global Hegemony and/or the first years of Post-Hegemonic America.
First there is Official Violence, Government Waged Violence. This is, in all its many ramifications, a technique used by ruling classes throughout the ages. The U.S. opened up its period of undisputed Global Hegemony with the single most violent official act in Human History, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, those were two cities in a defeated nation trying desperately to surrender. The use of the two atomic bombs was clearly a message to the erstwhile World War ally, the Soviet Union, the only other viable “Great Power” of that time. The Official Violence waged by the U.S. is regularly commented on even in the Corporate Controlled Media and certainly in the Alternative Media. This ranges from police constantly shooting unarmed people, to the 40 bombing campaigns waged by the U.S. since WW 2, to the endless deadly covert operations wage inside the U.S. and overseas. Item 1)., “Oklahoma sheriff, 2 staffers recorded discussing lynching Black people are suspended from sheriffs' association”, looks at the pervasiveness and nature of that Official Violence. The County officials discussed both racial violence and political violence they wanted to implement in that county. This is a far cry from the rarified heights of the Pentagon; it was a session of earnest planning and scheming by low-level local officials, some elected and some not.
Less well discussed, or even understood, is Unofficial Violence. But the ruling class plays the dominant role in setting the conditions that lead to the U.S. suffering from numbers of gun violence deaths and injuries that are just not seen in any other developed society. The socioeconomic and cultural milieu we now see in the U.S. is pushed by political operations and organizations funded by far-right billionaires. They work to implement their agenda using political operatives in organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), The Federalist Society, The Council for National Policy, the NRA, and many many others. The proliferation of guns, and the attitudes in using guns to shoot people, have been fostered by such legislation as “Stand your Ground” laws, and irrational and inaccurate interpretations of the 2nd Amendment from the NRA and other organizations. ALEC put lots of effort into getting numerous states to pass “Stand your Ground” laws. Items 2). - 5). all discuss the on-the-ground consequences of “Stand your Ground” laws, and the easy availability of guns. These three events, that all took place within the last week, also show the randomness of many of these type of shootings. Just knocking on the wrong door or pulling into the wrong driveway can be deadly.
Of course many acts of Unofficial Violence and all of Official Violence are anything but random. The Kyle Rittenhouse murder of two protesters in Kenosha, winked at by police, is a fine example of a highly directed act of Unofficial Violence.
Finally a commentator who has a somewhat different take on politics than I do, contributed an article, in Item 6). “Kaylin, Ralph, and the death of anonymous trust: A reflection on two shootings”; it was written apparently before the latest shooting incident in Elgin, Texas. I am very critical of the failings of Capitalist America, but Giridharadas takes an interesting point of view when he compares the concept of “anonymous trust”, that was developed in most of the Global North, and compares it to the suspicion and hostility found in many poor societies. His family emigrated from India, where Giridharadas claims that there is a virulent version of never trusting the “outsider” “the stranger”, to the affluent Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights. His parents were stunned that complete strangers would offer friendly greetings to them.
1). “Oklahoma sheriff, 2 staffers recorded discussing lynching Black people are suspended from sheriffs' association”, April 18, 2023, Corky Siemaszko, NBC News, at <https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/audio-coming-reporter-taped-oklahoma-leaders-talking-killing-reporters-rcna80299>
The Oklahoma Sheriffs’ Association unanimously voted to suspend McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy, investigator Alicia Manning and Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix.”
5–6 minutes
Note: This is a Graphical Image of the link to a video that discusses some of the events and people involved in this controversy in Idabel, county seat of McCurtain County, Oklahoma. It is embedded in the NBC News Story. Go to <https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/audio-coming-reporter-taped-oklahoma-leaders-talking-killing-reporters-rcna80299> to view the complete video that is 3 minutes and 31 seconds long
The Oklahoma Sheriffs’ Association suspended the McCurtain County sheriff and two other staffers Tuesday after they were secretly recorded talking about killing reporters and lynching Black residents after a public meeting.
The vote to suspend Sheriff Kevin Clardy, sheriff's investigator Alicia Manning and Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix was unanimous, the sheriffs’ association said on Facebook. The suspension does not remove them from their jobs with the sheriff’s department.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt called for the trio's resignations Monday and for County Commissioner Mark Jennings to step down, as well.
The McCurtain County Gazette-News identified the four as the officials who were recorded March 6 making threatening and racist statements after a meeting of the McCurtain County Commission.
None have spoken publicly about the scandal engulfing the county. On Monday the sheriff’s office claimed that the recording had been “illegally obtained,” appeared to have been altered and may have violated a state law prohibiting secret recordings by third parties.
(Caption: Residents call for the resignations of several McCurtain County officials at a county commissioners meeting Monday in Idabel, Okla. Christopher Bryan / Southwest Ledger via AP)
Christin Jones, of the law firm Kilpatrick Townsend, which represents the newspaper, insisted the recording had not been tampered with and that reporter Bruce Willingham, whose family has owned the newspaper for 40 years, did not break the law in making it.
“It is an accurate recording and does not violate the Oklahoma Security of Communications Act,” Jones said by email. “The full audio is planned to be released on Thursday.”
The entire recording has already been turned over to the FBI and the Oklahoma attorney general’s office, the law firm has said.
Dozens of picketers descended Monday on the headquarters of the McCurtain County Commissioners in the town of Idabel to demand the ousters of Clardy and the others following publication of the newspaper article.
On Tuesday, McCurtain Memorial Hospital in Idabel was evacuated after it got a bomb threat a little after 2 p.m. ET. It was not immediately clear whether it was related to the protests.
"The bomb threat was real, and the evacuation is real," an Idabel police dispatcher said. "But we don't know yet if the bomb is real, and we have a bomb squad there right now."
The hospital said in a statement confirming the threat that "a demand was made or else, the bomb would be detonated." It did not elaborate further.
Earlier, hundreds of critics went to Clardy's official Facebook page and blasted the sheriff’s office for suggesting Willingham had done something wrong.
"Absolute scum of the Earth," Christian Sage Walker wrote. "You got caught on tape talking about lynching black people and hanging journalists and now you want sympathy."
Another poster, Jay Stiles, mocked the sheriff's response.
"When you’re caught making fun of an arson victim, lamenting that you can’t lynch people and talking about hiring hitmen to take out a journalist ... and this is your response ... ," Stiles wrote. "Classy move McCurtain County Sheriff's Office."
Aside from the Facebook posting by the sheriff’s office, none of the embattled McCurtain County officials have commented on the scandal sweeping through Idabel and have not responded to emails and calls seeking comment. Willingham has not responded to requests for comment.
The drama began after Willingham, acting on a tip that the commissioners were illegally engaging in county business after the public meetings were over, left a recording device in the commissioners’ chamber, the newspaper reported.
Earlier that day, Willingham’s son, Christopher Lee Willingham, who is also a reporter at the newspaper, had sued Clardy, Manning and the commissioners in U.S. District Court for Eastern Oklahoma seeking unspecified damages. He claimed they were punishing him for his hard-hitting reporting by spreading “slander” about him.
When Willingham retrieved the device, he discovered that the conversation began with a grisly conversation about a fire victim being compared to “barbecue” before the group turned to talking about his son and hiring hitmen from the Louisiana mafia to take him out.
Perhaps the most explosive part of the recording came when the talk turned to who might run against Clardy in the coming election and Jennings recalled how a former sheriff “would take a damned Black guy and whoop their ass and throw them in the cell,” the newspaper reported.
“Yeah,” Clardy replied, according to the newspaper. “It’s not like that no more.”
“I know,” Jennings said. “Take them down to Mud Creek and hang them up with a damned rope. But you can’t do that anymore. They’ve got more rights than we’ve got.”
2). “Details Emerge in Deadly New York Shooting of Woman in Wrong Driveway”, Apr. 19, 2023, Jesse McKinley, Hurubie Meko & Jay Root, 1,323 words, The New York Times.
The man who fired on three vehicles that mistakenly drove up his driveway, killing a young woman, had a reputation as a sour character who did not like visitors.
HEBRON, N.Y. -- The man who lived on the ridge above this little upstate town had long had a reputation among some residents as a sour character who barked at neighbors' dogs, scolded a local church and was so averse to unannounced visitors that he had at one time used a chain to cordon off his quarter-mile-long drive.
On Saturday night, just before 10 p.m., Kaylin Gillis and a group of her friends were traveling in a caravan of two cars and a motorcycle that mistakenly drove up that same driveway. They were looking for a friend's house -- and were met with deadly gunfire, killing Ms. Gillis, 20.
It was warm, but overcast and dark, and the three vehicles, according to the county sheriff, turned off a highway, up the largely dirt road on which the man, Kevin Monahan, 65, lived, past several other homes.
They soon took a right turn into his drive, which is flanked by a tree with two worn ''private property'' signs, warning off trespassers, and a small ''private drive'' sign.
On Tuesday, a nearby resident, who declined to give his name because of the sensitivity surrounding the killing and the investigation, said he watched vehicles ascend the steep drive, their lights on, before seeing the motorcycle turn and start to descend.
Then, he heard a shot, followed by several seconds of silence. Then, a second shot rang out, though he and his wife initially believed it might have been fireworks.
''Our neighbor down the hill called and said, 'Did you hear gunfire up there?''' the resident said. ''And we said, 'Oh, we heard something.'''
He said he immediately called 911. But in an indication of how difficult the area is to navigate, those police officers initially also went up the wrong driveway, so he called 911 again. ''It's hard to get your bearings unless you're from here,'' he said.
Ms. Gillis's death shocked residents in the area and leaving the nation to wonder at yet another seemingly senseless gun death.
Mr. Monahan was charged with second-degree murder in an attack that the Washington County sheriff, Jeffrey J. Murphy, described as unprovoked and unexplained.
''There was no threat,'' he said on Tuesday. ''They were leaving.''
The killing came just days after another shooting in Kansas City involving a Black 16-year-old, Ralph Yarl, who was shot by an 84-year-old white man after mistakenly going to the wrong house while trying to pick up his brothers at a friend's home on Thursday evening. He survived but was badly injured.
Unlike that case, what happened in Hebron did not have racial overtones: Ms. Gillis was white, and so is Mr. Monahan. But the aggression of the encounter and the idea that a simple wrong turn led to death nonetheless left many here and elsewhere shaken and wondering what prompted Mr. Monahan's actions.
''I can't imagine that this is something that someone who is my neighbor is capable of,'' said Adam Matthews, who lives next to Mr. Monahan. ''I don't know what brings someone to that level.''
According to Sheriff Murphy, Ms. Gillis was one of four people in the last vehicle to turn around and was sitting in the front passenger seat when Mr. Monahan shot through the rear of the driver's side.
''They all were still in proximity to the house and they all heard two gunshots,'' he said. ''They realized immediately that she had been shot, so they were frantically leaving the driveway.''
The cars soon fled, desperately searching for cell service, a challenge amid the rolling hills and sparse populations of Washington County, which borders Vermont. They finally found a cell signal about five miles away, on a road adjacent to a local cemetery.
Mr. Monahan was initially uncooperative when police arrived, according to Sheriff Murphy, who said that Mr. Monahan had refused to speak with investigators and ''obtained a lawyer that night before he came out of the house.''
But Mr. Monahan's lawyer, Kurt Mausert, disputed the sheriff's account of the shooting, saying on Tuesday that the vehicles were speeding up the driveway, with engines revving and lights shining, which ''certainly caused some level of alarm to an elderly gentleman who had an elderly wife.''
''Is that a fear-inducing scenario? Well maybe it is,'' Mr. Mausert said. ''It is not the simple scenario of these people took a wrong turn and within 20 seconds of them taking the wrong turn, this guy's on his deck blasting away. That's not what happened.''
Mr. Mausert added that Mr. Monahan ''sincerely regrets this tragedy'' and ''feels terrible that there was a fatality,'' but he scolded the sheriff for ''basically acting as judge, jury and executioner.''
''When there's a tragedy and a victim, everyone wants a villain,'' he said. ''But sometimes they're just tragedies and victims and there are no villains. And this is one of those times.''
In an interview, Sheriff Murphy said that Ms. Gillis -- a former competitive cheerleader, honor student and budding artist -- was ''a beautiful and kind soul'' who had hoped to study marine biology.
''It's just a tragic situation,'' he said.
Albert Weils, a neighbor who lives three doors down from the Gillis family home in Schuylerville, about 25 miles southwest of Hebron, said that Ms. Gillis's father, Andy Gillis, is a correction officer at Washington County Correctional Facility.
''We don't think of stuff happening like that around here,'' Mr. Weils said, adding, ''It's a total shame.''
The family was largely quiet on Tuesday, and Ms. Gillis's grandfather's, Jack Amodeo, said that they were huddled, trying to process the shooting. ''It's really brought us down to our knees,'' he said.
Friends of the victim said that she and others may have been headed to a party held by other Schuylerville graduates when they went up the wrong driveway. ''There was friends from this community who were at that party,'' said Dallas Salls, who was a friend and works in a pizza place near the high school.
Her sister, Victoria Salls, 20, a close friend who was also a former downstairs neighbor in Schuylerville, said that Ms. Gillis was ''the glue to her family.'' She said that the shooting had made her and others scared to show up at someone's door or pull into the wrong driveway.
And while she said she saw parallels with the Kansas City case, Ms. Salls noted that Ralph Yarl had somehow survived. Ms. Gillis, she said, is ''never going to come home. She's never going to see her sisters. She's never going to be able to watch them grow up.''
In Hebron, a town of about 1,800 people about 60 miles northeast of Albany, several residents recalled Mr. Monahan as a dyspeptic and sometimes combative personality.
Mr. Matthews said that Mr. Monahan could be intimidating, striking a ''righteous'' attitude, and recalled an incident where a local church had put up floodlights over a basketball court thousands of feet from his home.
But, he said, Mr. Monahan -- whose home has a porch and floor-to-ceiling windows with a commanding view of the valley, and the church, below -- suspected something sinister.
''He felt that they had done it intentionally,'' Mr. Matthews said. ''This is the church, you know? It's not like somebody set a spotlight up to highlight his house.''
Brian Campbell, the town supervisor, said in a blogpost that the shooting had deeply affected his ''very quiet and tranquil town.''
He added: ''I can't even fathom what would make a person shoot at a car that was in their driveway if they didn't even know the people in the car.''
Ed Shanahan and Chelsia Rose Marcius contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
CAPTION(S):
PHOTO: Kaylin Gillis was 20. (PHOTOGRAPH BY CHUCHAY STARK) This article appeared in print on page A13.
3). “Woodlands Elite cheerleaders shot in H-E-B parking lot near Austin, 1 person arrested”, April 18, 2023 Updated: April 19, 2023, Claire Partain, Staff writer, Houston Chronicle, at <https://www.houstonchronicle.com/neighborhood/moco/news/article/woodlands-elite-cheerleaders-shot-h-e-b-austin-17904664.php>
~3 minutes
(Caption: 1 of 2, The Woodlands Elite Cheer Company building in Humble is seen on Tuesday. A person was arrested after two Woodlands Elite cheerleaders were shot from within their vehicle in an H-E-B parking lot outside of Austin. Jason Fochtman/Staff photographer)
(Caption: 2 of 2, The Woodlands Elite Cheer Company building in Humble is seen on Tuesday. A person was arrested after two Woodlands Elite cheerleaders were shot from within their vehicle in an H-E-B parking lot outside of Austin. Jason Fochtman/Staff photographer)
A person was arrested after two Woodlands Elite cheerleaders were shot from within their vehicle in an H-E-B parking lot outside of Austin early Tuesday morning, according to police and the cheer program.
One cheerleader was treated and released on scene, while another, reported in a Woodlands Elite Facebook post to be Round Rock High School student Payton Washington, remains hospitalized.
A person shot at several members of the cheerleading company at around 12:15 a.m. at an H-E-B on 1080 E. U.S. 290, according to the Elgin Police Department.
Elgin is around 30 minutes northeast of Austin.
When officers responded to the scene, they received a call about a shooting victim nearby and determined the incidents were related, police said.
Police said they treated and released one cheerleader at the scene, and another was transported to a hospital by helicopter.
Elgin police arrested Pedro Tello Rodriguez, Jr., 25, in relation to the incident. Rodriguez was charged with deadly conduct, a third-degree felony, and taken into custody.
All of the cheerleaders were involved with Woodlands Elite Cheer, a competitive cheering program with seven locations across Texas and the U.S., including Oak Ridge North near The Woodlands, according to the program's Facebook page.
(Caption: 4 of our girls were involved in a horrific incident on their way home after practice last night.
We are asking for your prayers for Payton, Keyona, Heather & Genesis. Also Big prayers for Payton as she recovers please.
Please keep these girls and our WE cheer family in your thoughts and prayers. WE appreciate our cheer community.
If you want to donate to help Payton's medical expenses, use this link for the GoFund Me, and it's in our bio https://gofund.me/0950724e)
They were heading home from training in The Woodlands gym when they got into an altercation with Rodriguez, according to KHOU.
Washington remains in stable condition in the ICU, according to a GoFundMe for her medical expenses. A Stony Point high school student and standout member of the Houston-based Woodlands Elite Generals team, Washington was training for the All-Star World Championships this May.
Washington is also a Stony Point High School student and is committed to Baylor's acrobatics and tumbling program starting in the fall.
Police said this remains an active investigation, and no new information is available.
claire.partain@houstonchronicle.com
4). “2 cheerleaders were shot in a Texas supermarket parking lot after one opened the door to the wrong vehicle. A suspect is under arrest”, April 19, 2023, Alisha Ebrahimji & Tina Burnside, CNN, at <https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/19/us/texas-cheerleaders-woodlands-elite-shooting/index.html>
6–8 minutes CNN —
(Note: This is a graphical image of a video of a Television News broadcast from CNN. To watch the actual video go to <https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/19/us/texas-cheerleaders-woodlands-elite-shooting/index.html>)
Two teenage cheerleaders were shot after one said she mistook the suspect’s vehicle for her own in a supermarket parking lot near Texas’ capital – making this at least the third incident this week in which young people who’d made an apparent mistake were met with gunfire.
Authorities arrested Pedro Tello Rodriguez Jr., 25, the man they say shot the two teens. He was taken into custody early Tuesday, the Elgin Police Department said in a news release later that morning.
According to a probable cause document, Tello is accused of deadly conduct with a firearm, a third-degree felony. He is being held on a $500,000 bond. It was not immediately clear whether he has an attorney.
Officers responding just after midnight Tuesday to an H-E-B supermarket parking lot found two people in a vehicle who’d been struck by bullets, police said, citing preliminary reports. One with serious injuries was rushed by helicopter to a hospital and was in critical condition, while the other was treated at the scene, the release said.
The latter girl had gotten out of a friend’s car and opened the door to a vehicle she thought was hers, only to find a man sitting in the passenger seat, she said during a live-streamed prayer vigil Tuesday night at her cheer team’s gym, CNN affiliate KTRK reported.
Heather Roth said she was trying to apologize to the man when he got out of the passenger door.
“He just threw his hands up, and then he pulled out a gun and he just started shooting at all of us,” Roth said, fighting tears.
Lynne Shearer, managing partner of the Woodlands Elite Cheer Company, told CNN that Roth and fellow cheerleader Payton Washington fled immediately in their car.
“As soon as they saw the gun, they said go and they drove and they went about two miles down the road,” Shearer told CNN. “And that’s when they realized that Payton was seriously hurt and they pulled over once they realized that guy wasn’t following them because Payton was … throwing up blood at that point. So they, that’s when they called 911.”
Washington was shot twice and badly injured, according to a GoFundMe spearheaded by her cheerleading team, the Woodlands Elite Generals. Washington is stable and recovering in the ICU, according to the team.
Roth was struck by a bullet but was treated and released at the scene, Shearer said.
Washington is “doing well today” after suffering from a ruptured spleen, which was removed, and she has damage to her pancreas and diaphragm, Shearer said Wednesday.
“Her stomach is not closed up yet and they are keeping her on heavy antibiotics for at least 48 hours to hopefully fight off infection,” she said. “Once they are sure there is no infection, they will go back in and finish up any issues and close her up.”
In another interview with CNN, Shearer said Washington should make a full recovery and has been FaceTiming with her friends.
Roth and Washington are from the Austin and Round Rock area and were commuting in a carpool to a cheerleading gym in Oak Ridge North, a Houston suburb, three times a week.
The commute is about 300 miles round trip – a commute Washington has been doing for eight years, Shearer said.
Roth is in college, while the other three girls in the vehicle, including Washington, are in high school.
Washington, a senior who had committed to Baylor University’s Acrobatics and Tumbling team, was born with only one lung and “has surpassed many obstacles to rise to the very top of her sport,” Shearer said.
“Payton is a strong young lady; if you know her, you know that about her,” Baylor head acrobatics and tumbling coach Felecia Mulkey told CNN. “I have no doubt she’s going to get through this.”
After visiting Washington on Tuesday, Mulkey said all things considered, she looked great and is making good progress – but acknowledged there’s still a long way to go on her path to recovery.
Mulkey described Washington as an “amazing athlete but a better human.”
“I know mental wounds also leave scars,” she said. “We want to lift up the athletes and their families during this difficult time. We love Payton and we wish her well as she recovers.”
Shearer said her team is busy still trying to prepare for the World Championships this weekend in Orlando, which Roth still plans to compete in.
Tuesday’s shooting was yet another case this week in which young people were shot after apparently going to the wrong place, including a 16-year-old struck in the head after ringing the wrong doorbell in Kansas City and a 20-year-old killed by the owner of a home whose driveway she’d inadvertently turned into.
The United States is the only nation with more civilian guns than people, with about 120 guns for every 100 Americans, according to the Small Arms Survey. Elgin is a city of some 10,000 people about a half-hour drive east of Austin.
A supermarket manager witnessed the incident, and police have surveillance footage from the parking lot that shows the license plate on the suspect’s car, police said, according to the probable cause affidavit.
“Elgin Detectives contacted Pedro Tello at the residence. Pedro Tello was still wearing the clothing that was observed by Elgin Detectives in the surveillance footage,” the affidavit states.
Detectives found a 9mm Mossberg pistol in the center console of a car used by the suspect, according to a search warrant inventory sheet. The search also yielded a 9mm round, spent casings and an empty ammunition magazine from the car or the suspect’s home, according to the document.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified the person who Baylor's head acrobatics and tumbling coach described visiting in the hospital. She was describing Payton Washington.
CNN’s Rosa Flores, Ashley Killough, Ed Lavandera, Raja Razek and Steve Almasy contributed to this report.
5). “Struggling to Understand A Shooting in Kansas City”, Apr. 19, 2023, Mitch Smith and Julie Bosman, 1,547 words, The New York Times.
Residents and friends of the victim were searching for answers as the 84-year-old homeowner surrendered to the authorities on two felony charges.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- On Tuesday morning, hundreds of Staley High School students filled the street outside their school in a display of anger and support for their fellow student, Ralph Yarl, who was shot by a homeowner after he rang a doorbell at the wrong house in Kansas City last week. One sign read, ''We Walk for Ralph.'' Another demanded, ''Justice 4 Ralph Yarl.''
By day's end, they found some measure of relief, as Andrew D. Lester, the 84-year-old man accused of shooting Ralph, surrendered to the authorities after being charged with assault in the first degree and armed criminal action.
But many residents of Kansas City remained deeply troubled by the events that had shaken their city for the last several days. Some asked why Mr. Lester was released from police custody last week rather than being charged immediately. Others said that federal hate crime charges should be brought, in a case that the county prosecutor said had a racial component, as an older, white homeowner was accused of shooting an unarmed Black teenager. A few wondered if a jury would sympathize with Mr. Lester, who told the police that he was ''scared to death'' of being physically harmed before shooting Ralph.
In a country on edge over crime, the shooting was the latest example of an ordinary interaction -- the ringing of a doorbell on a front step in a quiet neighborhood in Missouri -- instantly turning into another shocking incident of American gun violence.
''I am, I think, sufficiently frightened over how easily we are willing to shoot each other,'' said Representative Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat who previously served as the first Black mayor of Kansas City.
At a gathering in downtown Kansas City on Tuesday afternoon, Karen Allman, who lives down the street from Mr. Lester, said that she found some satisfaction that he had turned himself in, but that she was still upset over what had happened -- and that Mr. Lester had not been charged for several days after the shooting on Thursday night.
''I have no doubt that if it was a Black homeowner who shot a white kid on his porch, he would have stayed in jail until somebody pressed charges,'' she said.
Jail records showed that Mr. Lester was released on bond from Clay County jail shortly after surrendering to the authorities on Tuesday. No lawyer was listed as representing him in court records, and it was not clear when he might appear in front of a judge.
Ralph, who had been sent to pick up his younger siblings when the shooting occurred, was recovering at home after being hospitalized with two gunshot wounds to his head and arm. In a CBS News interview on Tuesday, Cleo Nagbe, Ralph's mother, said her son was doing ''considerably well'' after being shot above his left eye and in his upper right arm. Lee Merritt, a lawyer for the family, said Ralph was sitting up and playing with his dog on Tuesday. He said the teenager also spoke by phone with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Paul Yarl, Ralph's father, said this week that his son, an athlete who loves music and video games, had surgery over the weekend to remove the bullets and was able to walk out of the hospital on Sunday. He is expected to make a full recovery.
The authorities in Kansas City released new details of their investigation, and in the neighborhood in far northern Kansas City where the shooting took place, residents said they were still stunned by the shooting and its aftermath.
There was little disagreement over what had transpired on Thursday night. According to the criminal complaint, at roughly 9:50 p.m., one resident heard something unusual: a vehicle pulling into Mr. Lester's driveway. It was odd, the resident later told the police, for Mr. Lester to have a visitor this late at night.
Ralph had made an error common in Kansas City, driving to a house on Northeast 115th Street instead of Northeast 115th Terrace, a block away. He pressed the doorbell and waited outside the front door for what felt like a long time, he told the police later. Mr. Lester, who had just gone to bed, got up and opened the inside door while holding a revolver, according to a probable cause statement from investigators.
Mr. Lester told a police officer after the shooting that he saw a Black male ''pulling on the exterior storm door handle.'' This was one of the few areas of disagreement: When interviewed by a detective, Ralph said that he only rang the doorbell and did not pull on the door.
Within moments, Mr. Lester began shooting through the glass of the exterior storm door, afraid that a break-in was in progress, he told the police.
Ralph was shot in the head and then the arm. ''Don't come around here,'' he remembers Mr. Lester saying, according to a detective. He got up and ran away, trying to elude more gunshots, he told the police.
Zach Dovel, 20, was across the street watching a podcast, in the house where he lives with his mother.
The two were startled by a bang on the front door; fearful that someone was trying to break in, they called 911. The operator, Mr. Dovel said, told them that there was a gunman on the loose and that they should stay inside.
But they could see a teenager in the driveway and went outside. He was limping and bleeding, wounded from gunshots. Mr. Dovel ran back inside and grabbed towels, while his mother talked to Ralph, asking questions and trying to keep him alert until the ambulance arrived.
''The worst part was seeing him get down on his knees -- it looked like he was praying,'' Mr. Dovel said. ''He thought he was going to die.''
One of Ralph's family members said that he went to three different houses before a neighbor would help him. Mr. Dovel said the police and an ambulance arrived in what felt like minutes, and once there was a police presence outside, more neighbors emerged from their homes.
The shooting happened near the northern edge of Kansas City, a sprawling municipality that is larger in size than New York City though its population is far smaller.
Known locally as the Northland, this stretch of Kansas City north of the Missouri River has a reputation of being more conservative and white than the city as a whole. That perception intensified in 2021 when a dispute over police funding contributed to talk of the Northland splitting from Kansas City. The area where the shooting took place resembles a working-class suburb, with single-family homes that have generous yards and no sidewalks.
Residents who were home on Tuesday said they were unsettled by the shooting but rejected the notion that it reflected on their neighborhood, which was swarmed by television cameras.
''They're judging all of us, but everybody here is nice and decent,'' said Vickie Mahterian, a neighbor. ''People come to my door all the time. I don't shoot them in the head. We are good people here.''
Dan Fowler, a City Council member whose district includes the shooting scene, said there was a broad sense of relief in Kansas City that charges had been filed and that the suspect was in custody.
''It doesn't bring closure, but it brings a sense of closure that at least the process is going and that there is accountability,'' Mr. Fowler said.
Mr. Fowler said Kansas City's pattern for naming roads, in which there might be a terrace, street or boulevard with similar names near one another, made it easy to understand how Ralph ended up on the wrong porch.
''It's very easy to get that confused if you are not particularly familiar with the area,'' Mr. Fowler said. ''I was stunned that somebody would go on such an innocent, everyday thing of picking up your siblings, and then he gets shot.''
S. David Mitchell, a law professor at the University of Missouri, said that a defense lawyer could try to invoke the castle doctrine, a law in Missouri that allows people to use deadly force to defend themselves without having to retreat.
The front porch, Mr. Mitchell said, ''becomes the gray area of what constitutes one's castle,'' a question that the jury could consider.
''It's created this narrative that if you're ever in trouble, you can't stop and ask a homeowner for assistance in case you're shot.''
Mitch Smith reported from Kansas City, Mo., and Julie Bosman from Chicago. Carey Gillam and Lauren Fox contributed reporting from Kansas City, Mo. Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
CAPTION(S):
PHOTOS: Ralph Yarl, 16, was shot by a homeowner Thursday after he mistakenly went to the wrong house to pick up his siblings. He was home recovering Tuesday, and his mother said he was doing ''considerably well.'' (PHOTOGRAPHS BY BEN CRUMP LAW, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS; CHARLIE RIEDEL/ASSOCIATED PRESS); Andrew D. Lester This article appeared in print on page A13.
6). “Kaylin, Ralph, and the death of anonymous trust: A reflection on two shootings”, Apr 18, 2023, Anand Giridharadas, The Ink at < https://the.ink/p/kaylin-ralph-and-the-death-of-anonymous >
8–11 minutes
You are 20. A good kid. You have a boyfriend. You’re crazy about him. In a room, you notice people’s needs. You’re creative. A goofball. You make up games. Tonight you’re out. Four of you in the car, roaming upstate New York. Looking for a friend’s house. It’s dark. The roads are barely roads up here. No cell service to speak of. You think you find the driveway. To your right is a tree with a swing hanging from it. To your left is a shed-like thing with a white trailer in front of it painted with a sign: “Country Kitchen: Bakers of Great Taste.” And then up ahead, a bit up the hill, is a house where you think your friend lives. It has a sharply pointed roof and windows across the entire front, and it’s surrounded on the front and sides by a deck. And at some point — maybe you see him, maybe you don’t — a man is standing on the patio, and he is not your friend, not at all, he doesn’t know why you’re coming up his driveway at ten at night, maybe he never has visitors, why are you coming up his driveway, but this man never asks you that question, nor do you answer, because before any of that, he has shot at your car, and you are dead.
You are 16. It’s so young to have done all you’ve done. You play that clarinet and other instruments so well that you’re in school bands and the local youth orchestra. But music isn’t your only thing. You’re a science guy, too. You have visions of leaving Missouri for Texas and studying chemical engineering at A&M. When the more skeptical around you ask a young Black man how he plans to make it there, you answer confidently that, if there is a scholarship, you will win it. You see a way. It’s late on this night. The same ten o’clock hour. You are picking up your siblings from a house on Northeast 115th Terrace. What you don’t realize is that this house here you’re pulling up to is actually on Northeast 115th Street. Street, Terrace, anyone can mix these up. The right house is just steps away, anyway. You pull up the driveway, like that girl up in New York did. You get further than she did — you ring the doorbell. As your aunt will tell it, a man at this wrong address opens the door, stares at you, and shoots you in the head. After you crumple, he takes the opportunity to shoot you again. With all the strength that carried you this far, you get up. You make it to a nearby house, looking for help. No help. You make it to another. Finally at the third place you go, there is help. Unlike the young woman up in New York, you somehow live.
The shootings of Kaylin Gillis, of Saratoga County, New York, and Ralph Yarl, of Kansas City, Missouri, occurred more than 1,000 miles apart, befell two young people of different backgrounds, went down in places with their own histories and layers of context, had different outcomes: death and survival. And yet that they happened in the same week, that the basic beats of the incidents were almost precisely the same, that the men on the other side of the guns were conditioned so similarly — this could not help but hit you.
Afterward, I kept thinking of something a scholar friend of mine told me once. He is, like me, Indian-American, and we were talking about and comparing these two places we are from, and talking about the modernization of Indian society and various other things. And he said something — I can’t remember the exact words — about the great accomplishment of modern societies being “anonymous trust.”
In so many of the places our ancestors lived, all around the world, you knew a certain small number of people. And people you didn’t know were danger. People from another village: danger. People from another caste: danger. People who didn’t look like you: danger. And it’s easy to forget that the great accomplishment of so many modern societies has been to build institutions and sources of security and safety so that people don’t have to know other people personally, or know their grandmother, to trust each other. We are human, so we continue to fail at this all the time, and some groups bear the brunt of this mistrust. And yet, more often than we even think about, it works in ways that would have befuddled our forebears. We write checks to people we don’t know, share our addiction stories with people we don’t know, hire babysitters we don’t know from websites, eat semi-cooked meat and raw fish prepared by people we don’t know, live in houses engineered and built by people we don’t know, fly in planes and leap down from bungee platforms led by people we don’t personally know.
And it works. Most of the time, it works. And if you’ve lived and traveled in other places where anonymous trust is weaker, where people need to place you and know who exactly you are, all the way back to before you existed, to do business with you or have you over or talk to you at a party, you recognize the miracle.
My parents, immigrants from India, recognized the miracle. They were surprised, having migrated from India to the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, that people just said hi to you on the street. People don’t say hi to people they don’t know on the street in India. It’s just not a thing. But in Ohio they did, and my parents got used to it and loved it. They loved anonymous trust.
I tell you this because when I heard of these shootings in New York State and in Missouri, they made me think that our predicament now is deeper than we sometimes realize. We don’t just have a gun crisis, although we have a gun crisis of epic proportions. We don’t just have a polarization problem, or a disinformation problem, or a right-wing extremism problem, although we have all of these problems, and they are severe.
The particular details of these two shootings seemed to point to something even more fundamental. Not least because of these various other problems, we have entered into a state in which that foundational modern achievement of anonymous trust is cracking.
We are not merely divided; we are un-developing. We are — not all of us, thankfully, but many in this country — reverting to those eras of history in which anyone outside your circle had to be murdered if they came past your moat, because the presumption was that they would destroy you if you didn’t destroy them. Reverting to the purity-and-contamination framework of caste societies: my people are not just of similar mind and values and history; they are clean and safe, and others imperil me. Reverting to people getting their information from charlatans and god men and people they happen to know, not from empirical reality. Reverting to where the default assumption many people would make about why a strange person would go up their driveway is that they are coming to attack them.
In these two incidents, perhaps isolated but also emblematic, there is a certain vision of the world: Nothing and no one can be trusted, you and people like you are self-deputized law enforcers, and everyone in the world from beyond your moat is a suspect. This, I think, helps explain the spread of the thin-blue-line flag across much of the country. People aren’t just supporting the police. No one reveres anyone else that much. They are telling you that, in their own minds, they are the police. They are flying the flag of themselves.
So we are becoming a nation full of a distinct modern form of uncontacted tribes: at once hyperconnected and cut off, addled by propaganda and starved for human contact, convinced that the only good person you don’t know is a dead person you don’t know.
It is a betrayal and a degradation of one of the things America once most had going for it, something that people have often noticed when they come here from other places.
Some time ago, I was out in Arizona. I was following a young organizer named Cesar. He is an undocumented immigrant. He goes door to door in the evenings in Arizona and talks to people about standing up for immigrants, supporting reform. It’s brave. And scary. I didn’t want to impose my fear on him, but I kept wondering, as we knocked on each successive door, why he doesn’t feel afraid. How he manages to feel safe knocking on these doors, asking to have a conversation about the hottest of hot-button topics, and then sometimes even revealing his own status as what many on the door would call an “illegal.”
He seemed not to understand my concern. He saw himself as a democracy worker. Democracy requires talking to people you don’t know, you may not like, who may not like you, in the hope of finding something that might bind. It requires a faith in other people. It requires, you could say, anonymous trust.
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