A jury discovered a 27-year-old Ocean Park man responsible Thursday of first-degree homicide in a 2022 deadly drive-by taking pictures.
The Clark County Superior Courtroom jury deliberated for about an hour Thursday morning earlier than returning its verdict. Yana Prepare dinner is scheduled for a listening to March 27 to set his sentencing date. He’s being held with out bail within the meantime.
Prepare dinner’s protection legal professional, Marina Spencer, mentioned she was disenchanted within the jury’s choice, and he or she wished the jurors spent extra time fastidiously contemplating the case. However, she mentioned she respects the jury course of.
She additionally mentioned Prepare dinner intends to file an attraction. She hugged Prepare dinner after the choose learn the decision.
Senior Deputy Prosecutor Dan Gasperino mentioned his workplace at all times respects the jury’s choice.
Throughout the trial’s opening statements March 11, Gasperino described how first responders initially thought they had been investigating a deadly automobile crash.
Branden Lombardo was pronounced lifeless Nov. 6, 2022, after his automobile veered off Northeast Fourth Plain Boulevard and crashed close to the intersection of sixty fifth Avenue in central Vancouver. An post-mortem revealed the 26-year-old had truly died from a gunshot wound to the top, in line with investigators.
Gasperino mentioned investigators used cellphone information and surveillance video to establish Prepare dinner because the shooter.
He mentioned he would additionally present jurors video of Lombardo’s Chevrolet leaving a close-by condo complicated and being adopted by an Infiniti with its headlights off, regardless of the 8 p.m. darkness. Prepare dinner could possibly be seen coming into the passenger’s facet of the Infiniti, the prosecutor mentioned.
Prepare dinner’s cellphone information positioned him in Vancouver the weekend of the taking pictures and confirmed that he left city afterward, Gasperino mentioned.
He was arrested, Gasperino mentioned, when he arrived for a probation check-in with the Washington State Division of Corrections in Raymond.
Prepare dinner’s different protection legal professional, Katie Kauffman, had advised jurors they’d hear about an incomplete investigation, conflicting data and witnesses whom she mentioned are biased.
