Ralph Yal (16) accidentally pressed the doorbell in a white residential area in Kansas City on the 13th. After going to pick up his younger siblings from her friend’s house, he confused the address and went to the next door, but the cost was devastating. Courtesy of Ben Crump Law
Kwang-Young Shin Deputy Director of International Affairs
#. Thursday (April 13) 9:50pm
Andrew Lester (84), who lives outside Kansas City, Missouri, USA, woke up from his bed at the sound of a doorbell. There were no guests scheduled to come that night. It was unusual for him to live alone after his wife went to a nursing home. The front door of his house was a double structure with an inner door and an outer door overlapping, just like American houses. Lester opened the inner door. Through the window of the outer door, I saw a strange black man.
Lester raised the revolver in his hand. There was no conversation between the two for a few seconds before he pulled the trigger. The bullet went through the window and hit the black man in the forehead. Lester fired another shot into his fallen arm. “Get out of here right now.”
A few minutes later, Jack Dobell, a resident of the neighborhood, was startled by the sound of someone knocking on his front door and called 911. The 911 agent said, “It could be a fugitive, so stay home,” but Dobel, who looked out the window, had no choice but to leave. A black boy was on his knees, bleeding and praying.
His name was Ralph Yal (16). He was on his way to pick up his twin brothers who had gone to a friend’s house on an errand for his parents. He was looking for the address ‘115th Terrace’ and ended up on ‘115th Street’, one block away. The bullet that came through the window was the price of accidentally pressing the doorbell of an old white man’s house.
#. Saturday (15th) 9:55pm
College student Kayleen Gillis, 20, was driving with three friends through a dense forest in the suburbs of New York State. She was on her way to a high school reunion party. Since it was a remote place, the internet signal was unstable, so the smartphone navigation was unavailable. There was a ‘private land’ sign on the road, but it was hard to see because it was a night road with no streetlights. A friend said, “I think I went the wrong way.” It was then. The sound of her shotgun echoed and the bullet pierced her car window.
My friend, who was driving, hurriedly turned the car around and stepped on the accelerator. In order to call 911, I ran 8 km to the place where the communication signal was caught. When I stopped to locate it, Gillis, who was in the passenger seat, was bleeding to death. The man in his 60s who shot the gun was a builder who owned a huge private land of 160,000 square meters. He told the police that he was “taking out the trespasser.”
#. Tuesday (18th) 0:15
Heather Ross, 18, a high school cheerleader from Austin, Texas, was on her way home from practicing with friends ahead of a cheerleading competition four days later. He pulled into a supermarket parking lot, bought a drink, and went to find his friends’ car, but accidentally got into another car of the same model. When Ross saw that a strange man was in the car, he quickly got out and got into his friends’ car.
Ross saw a man in his twenties approaching from the car he had just gotten into. As I rolled down the car window to apologize, the man started shooting through the open window. Ross was hit by one shot, and a friend next to him was mortally wounded in the back and leg.
Gun accidents in the United States are unusual, but Americans were shocked when a common mistake in everyday life turned into a series of shootings. Hours after the ‘cheerleader incident’, in North Carolina, the landlord shot a 6-year-old girl who had gone to pick it up with her parents when the ball rolled into the yard of another house while playing ball. Both her parents were seriously injured.
How can you shoot people like this? In the United States, there is a common law called ‘Castle Doctrine’. The house is the owner’s castle, and if there are intruders in the castle, they believe that they have the right to protect themselves with force. According to this customary law, force is not necessarily the last resort. If you heard ‘reasonable fear’ enough to feel a threat to your life, it is recognized as self-defense.
The ‘Stand Your Ground’ law extends the right to self-defense not only to the home but also to privately owned spaces such as vehicles. About 30 states, including Missouri, where the ‘doorbell incident’ occurred, have this law. There is a legal basis for the perception that ‘you can shoot in my space’. Lester, who shot the black boy, claims he was “horrifying enough to die at the time” and could be protected by the law.
American gun advocates emphasize the ‘balance of fear’ that guns can only be stopped with guns. However, the fear that anyone can shoot a gun causes excessive anxiety, which leads to overreaction, and eventually creates a vicious cycle of becoming more anxious for fear of becoming a victim of overreaction. The current state of the United States, where people have to risk their lives for even the slightest mistake of ringing the wrong doorbell or taking the wrong road while driving, clearly shows the holes in a nation armed with firearms.
Kwang-Young Shin, Deputy Director of International Affairs neo@donga.com
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2023-04-25 18:00:00
