(CNSNews.com) - Klint Ludwig, the grandson of the 84-year-old man accused of shooting a black teenager who mistakenly knocked on the wrong door, called it a “horrible tragedy” that “never should have happened.”
Ludwig told CNN’s Don Lemon on Thursday morning that he believes his grandfather “holds racist tendencies.” He said he’s publicly criticizing his grandfather because “it’s the right thing to do.”
“Do you believe your grandfather is racist?” Don Lemon asked Ludwig.
“I believe he holds racist tendencies and beliefs,” Ludwig responded.
“Why do you say that?” Lemon asked.
“Uh, he’s just a stock American Christian male. It’s – older, you know, that’s just how they are. It’s the conspiracies and weird random racist things they say…and it doesn’t make sense. But they’re just scared.”
Lemon noted that Ludwig was “generalizing” about “older, Christian white males.” He asked Ludwig, “What do you mean by that?”
“Okay, yeah, I just – I feel like a lot of people of that generation are caught up in this 24-hour news cycle of fear and paranoia perpetuated by some other news stations, and he was fully into that and watched Fox News all day, every day, blaring into his living room.
“And I think that stuff really kind of reinforces this negative view of minority groups, and leads people – it doesn’t necessarily lead people to be racist, but it reinforces and galvanizes racist people in their beliefs,” Ludwig said.
Later in the interview, Lemon asked Ludwig if his grandfather has “always been this way.”
"I feel like he’s been pretty conservative for a long time, which is fine,” Ludwig said. “But (I) feel like in the last five or six years, it’s really ramped up.
"He was a huge Trump supporter, and between that and then the galvanizing that people have been feeling lately with the politicians and ideologues cosigning [condoning?] violence and domestic violence, domestic terrorism, and even pardoning people who murder other people for differing political beliefs – I feel like all that stuff has really ramped up his beliefs and radicalized him a little bit."
Ludwig's grandfather, 84-year-old Andrew Lester, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to felony charges and is free on bond pending a June court hearing. The victim, Ralph Yarl, is now out of the hospital, back home, recovering from a bullet wound to the head.