A jury found a 27-year-old Ocean Park man guilty Thursday of first-degree murder in a 2022 fatal drive-by shooting. The Clark County Superior Court jury deliberated for about an hour Thursday morning before returning its verdict. Yana Cook is scheduled for a hearing March 27 to set his sentencing date. He is being held without bail in the meantime. Cook’s defense attorney, Marina Spencer, said she was disappointed in the jury’s decision, and she wished the jurors spent more time carefully considering the case. But, she said she respects the jury process. She also said Cook intends to file an appeal. She hugged Cook after the judge read the verdict.

Senior Deputy Prosecutor Dan Gasperino said his office always respects the jury’s decision. During the trial’s opening statements March 11, Gasperino described how first responders initially thought they were investigating a fatal car crash. Branden Lombardo was pronounced dead Nov. 6, 2022, after his car veered off Northeast Fourth Plain Boulevard and crashed near the intersection of 65th Avenue in central Vancouver. An autopsy revealed the 26-year-old had actually died from a gunshot wound to the head, according to investigators. Gasperino said investigators used phone records and surveillance video to identify Cook as the shooter. He said he would also show jurors video of Lombardo’s Chevrolet leaving a nearby apartment complex and being followed by an Infiniti with its headlights off, despite the 8 p.m. darkness. Cook could be seen entering the passenger’s side of the Infiniti, the prosecutor said.

Cook’s phone records placed him in Vancouver the weekend of the shooting and showed that he left town afterward, Gasperino said. He was arrested, Gasperino said, when he arrived for a probation check-in with the Washington State Department of Corrections in Raymond. Cook’s other defense attorney, Katie Kauffman, had told jurors they would hear about an incomplete investigation, conflicting information and witnesses whom she said are biased.