Ten weeks after a white man shot Ralph Yarl, a Black Kansas City teenager, in the head, Yarl is physically recovered and in good spirits. “I’m just a kid and not larger than life because this happened to me,” Yarl told Good Morning America's Robin Roberts. “I’m just going to keep doing all the stuff that makes me happy. And just living my life the best I can, and not let this bother me.” He still has headaches, trouble sleeping and his mind is sometimes foggy, the Associated Press reports. “You’re looking at a kid that took the SAT when he was in eighth grade — and now his brain is slowed,” said Yarl's mother, Cleo Nagbe. “So physically he looks fine. But there’s a lot that has been taken from him.”
Yarl had gone in search of the family of his brother’s friends when he was shot in the head by a white man. He had mistakenly gone to a home where he thought his younger brothers would be. After waiting a long time on the porch, he said a man opened the door. “I see this old man and I’m saying, ‘Oh, this must be like, their grandpa,’” said Yarl, now 17. “And then he pulls out his gun. And I’m like, ‘Whoa!’ So I like, back up. He points it at me.” The man, Andrew Lester, 84, shot Yarl in the head. Yarl was bleeding and said he wondered how it was possible that he had been shot in the head. The man he had never met before said five words to him. He said: “Don’t come here ever again.” Lester has pleaded not guilty to first-degree assault and armed criminal action in the April 13 shooting.