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CNN: "Accused shooter in Kansas City shooting of Black teen who went to the wrong house is White man in his 80s" Archive: https://archive.is/NcFb5
Edit: Andrew Lester is the 84 year old white man and is facing charges of assault in the first degree and armed criminal action. Clay County attorney Zachary Thompson states there was a racial element but hate crimes is a lower charge so will not be brought. "There is no evidence that the teen entered the home and preliminary evidence shows Lester opened fire on the teen through a glass door with a .32 caliber revolver"
Ralph Yarl is the black teen that was shot outside of Kansas City, Missouri. Early it was reported that he was shot twice in the head but now his family's attorneys are saying that Yarl "shot twice and struck in the head and arm" and Yarl has now been released from the hospital and is recovering at home.
The white man in his 80's "was taken into custody on April 13 just before midnight and was released less than two hours later at 1:24 a.m. on April 14."
By all accounts I am seeing Ralph Yarl is a band geek which places my heuristic chances of aggression on his part as low. If I found the correct streets the subdivision is one of the last developments before hitting mostly farms and the street names are really confusing with the developer using the same number twice and then alternating between "Street" and "Terrace."
Of course, still waiting on details but in my opinion this could likely be what some people consider to be the quintessential example of a "racist" shooting. If that's the case and the only quibble between Red Tribe and Blue Tribe is if it would have made a difference if the kid was white or black does this story gain a much traction with that little toxoplasma or does it more go the way of the Eric Garner and Philando Castile killings?
Approximately none. Black on white violence isn't uncommon and doesn't generate much in the way of outrage at all.
I will register a prediction that the full story will not be very similar to a kid rang a doorbell and was then racistly shot for no reason at all. I don't know what happened, I don't have a specific hypothesis, and I am not jumping to blame the injured teen, I just bet that this is not what happened.
Agreed, it harkens back to Martin and Arbery, which is exactly why my inclination is to not believe that he was just an innocent jogger, armed only with Skittles, ringing a doorbell and being shot by an evil old racist for no particular reason.
Precisely: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/phenix-city-woman-shot-killed-12-year-old-boy-who-was-rummaging-in-her-yard-da-says/ar-AA175axD
The above is the complete reverse of the above, except the white kid is 12 here. Race is not mentioned at all, though it shows the picture of the perpetrator.
Or another more blatant case of racial hatred: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/nbc-abc-cbs-and-cnn-show-zero-results-for-reports-on-the-5-year-old-white-child-allegedly-executed-by-black-25-year-old-neighbor
Snopes shot back, saying that nbc, CNN and ABC did write articles about the murder, albeit after the above article was written. Even so, note the headlines they give:
I took a quick look through half the above articles, they do not mention race in the text though they might show images of the victim and the accused. Now compare to the headlines for this incident from OP's links:
(it's like one of those light novels that tells the whole story in the title!)
This article doesn't mention race but links to a fair few from the same newspaper that do. Anyway, there's breathless coverage and racial spin for this white-kills-black story in the majority press (Washington Examiner and similar excepted) while the earlier black-kills-white story gets slow-walked and purged of any racial element. This is not what you'd expect from a country where a minority, blacks, kills proportionately vastly more of the majority, whites, than whites kill of blacks. Naively, people would assume that bigger trends get bigger coverage. This is clearly not the case.
Where is your evidence that "racial hatred" was the motive in that case? There is none in the article you link to.
What other reason could there be to shoot someone else's 5-year-old child playing in the street?
A reasonable approach for suspecting that a child rode their bicycle through your yard is not executing them! And that's just someone else's theory. It doesn't even seem to be true.
https://www.oxygen.com/crime-news/darius-sessoms-may-get-death-penalty-cannon-hinnant-death
There's no evidence of any bad blood between the families or anything. So the default assumption should be racial hatred.
No, as I said before, the default assumption should be that the shooter had some sort of mental issues, especially given that he committed the murder in broad daylight in front of witnesses. Again, as I said, that would certainly be the default assumption if they had both been of the same race. The fact that they were of different races does very little to change that default, especially given that even actual, dyed-in-the-wool racists are not in the practice of executing children on the street. Hell, even the Zebra killers did not shoot little children.
Firstly, racial hatred and mental issues are not mutually exclusive. We can be sure he doesn't have much planning skills. But nobody seems to have announced a motive and the guy himself didn't plead mental illness. If he says that his motive was mental illness then that would ameliorate his position somewhat - but he'd have to produce some kind of evidence that he's mentally ill. Whereas if his motive was racial hatred then admitting it would worsen his position. So if he's silent, then it means that his motive was racial hatred.
I didn't say they were. The issue is not whether they are mutually exclusive, but rather what he default assumption should be.
Most mental issues, and most mental illnesses (note that I said the former) are not grounds for a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, which is an extremely narrow defense. In North Carolina, the defendant must show that he had some mental "disease or defect" which "so impaired the defendant’s mental capacity that the defendant either did not know the nature and quality of the act as the defendant was committing it, or, if the defendant did, that the defendant did not know that this act was wrong[.]" A guy can be a grade A sociopath, or schizophrenic, yet not be able to plead insanity.
Mental illness is not a motive. Regardless, this assumes it would ever come up. First of all, that would only come up at trial, but there was no trial; the defendant pleaded guilty (technically, he entered an Alford plea). And, even had there been a trial, the defendant would not have had cause to explain his motive. A defendant does not have to testify at trial, and rarely does so. Nor does the prosecution have to prove motive, because "'[m]otive is not an element of first-degree murder, nor is its absence a defense.'" State v. Carver, 725 SE 2d 902, 905 (NC: Court of Appeals 2012). Motive is admissible to show show that the defendant is likely the perpetrator, id, that was not an issue in this case, so evidence of motive might well have been irrelevant and inadmissible. it is certainly inadmissible if raised by the defendant, because it is not relevant to any claim that the defendant could make at trial. The only time it would be relevant would be at sentencing, But, again, the sentence here was imposed pursuant to a plea bargain.
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