An 86-year-old Kansas City man pleaded guilty Friday to a lesser charge in the 2023 shooting of Ralph Yarl, a Black honor student who rang the white man’s doorbell by mistake.

Andrew Lester was scheduled to stand trial next week on charges of first-degree assault and armed criminal action in the shooting of the then-16-year-old, who survived and has since graduated from high school.

As part of a plea deal, Lester pleaded guilty to second-degree assault, a charge that Judge David Chamberlain said carried a sentence of one to seven years. Lester, who will be sentenced on March 7, was hunched over as he was wheeled into the courtroom, his hands folded.

Yarl and his mother, Cleo Nagbe, sat in the front row during the hearing.

In a statement issued after Lester’s plea, Nagbe thanked her family’s supporters who “saw Ralph’s humanity, and rejected a world where fear and prejudice endanger innocent lives.”