This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator datedMay 5, 2023
On April 28, in a town outside of Houston, Texas, a man was asked by his neighbors to stop firing his gun at night in his front yard because they had a sleeping baby. The man then slaughtered his neighbors in their house with an AR-15 style rifle, killing three females and two were males, including an 8-year-old boy. Two surviving children were found under two deceased women who had shielded them with their bodies. The suspect was still on the loose at the time this was written.
Two weeks earlier, on April 13, 16-year-old African American teenager Ralph Yarl was shot after ringing the doorbell to the wrong house in Kansas City, Missouri while attempting to pick up his younger brothers. After being shot in the head and arm, Yarl sought help and was turned away from three different homes before good Samaritans finally tended to him where he lay in the street. Yarl is expected to make a full recovery.
The story garnered national attention, both for the racial aspects of the crime and for the fact it highlighted America’s problematic fixation with guns. Andrew Lester, 84, was charged with a crime that is the equivalent of attempted murder in Missouri and the district attorney stated that there was a “racial component” to the shooting.
Lester claimed he was scared to death of Yarl’s size, though the honors student and all-state band member is 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighs 140 pounds. Lester’s grandson told the New York Times that he “spent considerable time at home in a living room chair, watching conservative news programs at high volume,” painting a picture of an elderly man who consumes a great deal of media meant to make people fearful.
Two days later, in rural Washington County, New York, Kaylin Gillis, 20, was shot and killed after she and three others accidentally turned into the wrong driveway while looking for a friend’s house. Her boyfriend, who was driving, recounted that they “thought we were at the right address” and they “didn’t have any cell service to figure it out. As soon as we figured out that we were at the wrong location, we started to leave, and that’s when everything happened.”
Kevin Monahan, 65, fired from his porch at the vehicle as it was driving away. One of the shots fatally struck Gillis. Monahan has been charged with second-degree murder.
Three days later, on April 18, a Springfield, Missouri man threatened a grocery store worker with his gun because the meat department was closed and he wanted steak. Larry Gene Gay, 70, claims he took out the gun to let the worker know, “I need you to help me to get a couple of these steaks. I’m not going to hurt you.” The store employee stated, “he held the gun to my throat, pushed it into my throat.”
Police found Gay with a loaded semi-automatic pistol with a bullet in the chamber, and when asked why store workers felt he was threatening them, he said, “I have no idea.” He is facing felony charges of unlawful use of a weapon and armed criminal action.
On the same day in Gaston County, Florida, Robert Louis Singletary, 24, is accused of shooting 6-year-old Kinsley White and her parents after he became upset with a ball rolling into his yard. The young girl had a bullet fragment in her cheek, her mother was grazed, and her father was hospitalized with a gunshot wound, though all are now home recovering. Singletary is facing multiple felony charges, including four counts of attempted first-degree murder.
Two days later, on April 20, another overreaction by an armed person resulted in innocent people being shot in Elgin, Texas. One of three cheerleaders, Heather Roth, opened the door to the wrong car at a grocery store parking lot, thinking it was hers. After realizing the mistake and returning to her car, the man approached and fired at them, grazing heather. Payton Washington, 18, was shot in the leg and back.
Suspect, Pedro Tello, 25, is currently being held for the attack. Washington, whose spleen was removed, was released from the hospital April 28.
Young people should not worry they will be shot for going to the wrong house or wrong car or because their ball rolls into the neighbor’s yard – things that we have all probably done in our lives – but this is where we are in America, with the mass proliferation of guns to almost anyone and stand-your-ground laws that make people feel like they can liberally use their guns on others, so long as they say they felt threatened. This is no way to live.
