The road to recovery is a long one for Ralph Yarl. The teen was shot over a month ago when he mistakenly went to the wrong house while picking up his younger brothers from a playdate in Kansas City.
The then-16-year-old was shot once in the head and once in the right arm without question by homeowner Andrew Lester after he rang the doorbell. The white 84-year-old surrendered to authorities days later. He was charged with assault in the first degree and armed criminal action. He was released on a $200,000 bond. Despite being shot in the head, Yarl was miraculously released from the hospital three days after the April 13 incident with less brain damage than anyone could have imagined. But there is still a long way to go.
“There are a lot of things that he’s going to have to work his way through,” Dr. Faith Spoonmore, Yarl’s aunt, told NBC 41 in a new interview. “It’s just hard to explain how he really is doing. The events that happened on April 13th, Ralph spoke about it one time, and that was in the hospital. And since then, Ralph has not spoken about that event with anybody else,” she continued.
Spoonmore says Yarl, who celebrated his seventeenth birthday on May 7, has been living with her out of fear of returning to his neighborhood. She believes his reluctance to speak about the traumatic event is an act of disassociation. “It’s almost like if I act like it did not happen, maybe it didn’t happen to me,” said his aunt.
Other times, Spoonmore has observed the musician return to his outgoing self, but those instances are fleeting. “He still has these moments where he’s hanging out with his brothers and you hear them laughing, and you see that kid comes back and he seems to be happy and smiling, and he comes back for a little bit. But then he has these moments where he sits in the corner and folds up,” she added.
Before being shot, Yarl was revered as a stellar student with the ability to play multiple instruments. These days, his time playing music is cut short. “You walk in his room, and you find a bass clarinet on the floor, a clarinet on the bed, a xylophone somewhere else. So, he has all these instruments around him that he’ll play every so often but definitely not like before,” said Spoonmoore.
For now, she asks that supporters continue to share messages encouraging the young man as he finds his way through the healing process. Yarl’s aunt has also asked that members of the community attend the 36th annual “Going the Distance for Brain Injury” walk in his honor on May 29 at Loose Park. Those attending to show support for Yarl are asked to wear blue, his favorite color.