Andrew Lester, the 86-year-old Missouri man who shot a Black teenager who rang his doorbell by mistake in 2023, died Wednesday, just weeks before he was to be sentenced. The 86-year-old pleaded guilty to second degree assault on Feb. 14 in the shooting of Ralph Yarl. The investigation had frustrated Kansas City, Missouri, activists and […]
Missouri
Posted inCriminal Justice
Why Missouri’s AG Keeps Blocking Innocent People From Freedom
DNA evidence had suggested for years that Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams was wrongfully convicted for the murder of Felicia Gayle, and yet, the final weeks before the Sept. 24 execution date had been a series of twists and turns. That evidence was enough for Gayle’s family and Missouri’s former attorney general in 2017. This January, […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Gun Violence
Shooting of Black Teen Is a Symptom of Kansas City’s Racist History
Alvin Brooks remembers growing up as the only Black kid in an all white, but poor white, Leeds-Dunbar neighborhood during the 1940s in Kansas City, Missouri. Although he made friends, he was reminded that in other parts of the city he was not welcome. Sometimes the streetcar’s white motorman charged him a nickel to board […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Public Safety
Kansas City Police Dismissed a Black News Site’s Reports of Missing Women. Then One Showed Up.
For more than a month, a 22-year-old Black woman was allegedly held hostage inside a makeshift room in the basement of an Excelsior Springs, Missouri, home. Bound with handcuffs, gagged by duct tape and a metal collar with a padlock around her neck, she was repeatedly raped and whipped by her kidnapper, according to court […]