Ralph Yarl’s mom says her son is ‘replaying the situation over and over’ after being shot

Ralph Yarl, a Black teenager who was shot after he accidentally went to the wrong house to pick up his siblings last week, is now recovering at home. His mother tells CBS This Morning that her son can’t stop crying while replaying the whole situation in his mind.

Yarl’s mom, Cleo Nagbe, says her son sustained gunshot wounds to his upper right arm and left frontal lobe above his left eye. Nagbe told Gayle King the bullet in his head was not removed for up to 12 hours, and that the “residual effect” of that injury is going to stay with Yarl “for quite a while.”

She says that her son is able to communicate “when he feels like it,” she said, but “mostly he just sits there and stares and the buckets of tears just rolls down his eyes.”

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“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,” Nagbe said.

According to his mom, Yarl’s younger brothers were supposed to attend a sleepover, but she didn’t want them to stay all night. So she told the boys they could stay until 10 p.m., and had Yarl set to pick them up. Nagbe says he left the house without his phone and ended up at the wrong address by mistake—he arrived at N.E. 115th Terr. instead of N.E. 115th St., Fox 4 reported.

“He went and rang the doorbell. And he was supposed to stay outside, and his brothers were supposed to run outside, get in the car and they come home,” Nagbe said. “While he was standing there, his brothers didn’t run outside, but he got a couple of bullets in his body instead of a couple of twins coming up, out, and giving him a hug.”

Nagbe says her son is recovering at home thanks to his family.

“He’s home but I want to remind everybody that Ralph is home because he’s surrounded by a team of medical professionals,” Nagbe said. “I’m a nurse for almost 20 years. His aunt is a physical therapist. His uncle is a medical professional. That’s why he’s home.”

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The white man accused of shooting Yarl is 84-year-old Andrew D. Lester. Following the shooting, he was charged with assault in the first degree and armed criminal action. He was out on bail approximately two hours after being detained by authorities.

Clay County Prosecutor Zachary Thompson said at a press conference Monday “there was a racial component to the case.” Lester claims he feared for his life when Yarl approached his door.

“There’s some obvious racial elements,” Merritt said. “It’s a White shooter, it’s a Black boy, the White shooter perceives the Black boy as a threat, and we hear that a lot.”

Ralph Yarl’s family attorney, Lee Merritt, agrees.

“It sounds awfully familiar,” Merritt told King of Lester’s claim. “We know that Blackness in and of itself — just being Black — has been seen as a threat in this country, and so when we hear him say he feared for his life when the only thing he was being confronted with was a 16-year-old ringing his doorbell, it is obviously unjustifiable for him to decide to use deadly force against this so-called threat.”