A self-professed “prepper,” whose homemade bunker was equipped for the end of days, reached his own end in a Coos County courtroom Tuesday morning.
Following a two-and-a-half hour bench trial, Judge Richard Barron found Jay Yarbrough guilty of two counts of menacing, three counts of possession of a destructive device, possession of a short-barreled rifle and two counts of fourth-degree assault.
Barron said he’ll issue a written verdict on two remaining charges of unlawful use of a weapon prior to sentencing.
The conviction caps one of the most peculiar criminal footnotes in Coos County’s history books.
Domestic mayhem
Yarbrough’s troubles began in June, when his wife, April Yarbrough, says he attacked her over her attempts to get medical attention. She testified that on that morning, Jay Yarbrough was experiencing chest pain and difficulty breathing. When his wife and their daughter, Hailey, tried to convince him to go to the hospital, he reacted violently.
“He said if he was going to die he’d rather die at home where he could be at peace,” Hailey Yarbrough said.
Eventually, they said, he lost his temper and brandished a short-barreled AR-15-type rifle he had kept with him.
Both mother and daughter testified that Yarbrough pointed the rifle toward the ceiling and fired a single shot. Hailey told her mother to get out of the room, but April Yarbrough said her husband followed her to the kitchen, pushed her to the ground and kicked her in the head.
According to all parties involved, Jay Yarbrough went back to bedroom following the assault. His wife said she got friends to take him to the hospital shortly after.
An explosive situation
After the assault, April Yarbrough said she went to the Coos Bay Police Department and asked them to remove her husband’s weapons from the home.
Coos Bay Police Officer Darrell Babb testified that that he immediately noticed the rifle’s short barrel when he found it inside the house on June 12.
Oregon State Police forensic expert Shawn Malikowski testified by phone that the New Frontier Armory LW-15 had been fitted with a barrel that was 8.375-inches long. Under the National Firearms Act, rifles with barrels less than 16 inches in length are subject to a $200 tax and have to be registered with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
More disconcerting than the rifle was what officers discovered beneath the home when April Yarbrough pointed out a crawlspace under the master bedroom.
Babb said it was a tight squeeze.
“I barely fit through the hole with my gear on,” he said.
April Yarbrough testified her husband dug the bunker over a period of approximately eight months beginning in 2012. Inside the underground space, which police said stretched beneath multiple rooms of the house, Babb saw more firearms, ammunition, gunpowder and hand grenade components.
Assistant District Attorney Stephen Pettey held up a vaccum-sealed plastic bag containing what Babb identified as a hand grenade fuse mechanism found inside the bunker.
What had officers more alarmed, though, were the actual live IEDs sitting in plain view.
“On the lefthand side, pretty quickly I noticed the pipe bombs on a table, I’d guess you’d call it,” he said.
Officers took photos and quickly backed out of the house.
Coos Bay police called in the Oregon State Police Explosives Unit from Central Point.
Bomb technician Greg Costanzo testified that the devices were made of large CO2 canisters that had been filled with gunpowder.
Troopers carried explosives to a makeshift sandbag enclosure they’d built in a nearby parking lot of John Topits Park.
Costanzo said that two of the three live devices they found were disarmed without incident, but another exploded when they shot it with a specialized shotgun called a percussion-actuated nonelectric disrupter. The explosion spread shrapnel across the parking lot.
Man on the run
At some point while police were at his home, Yarbrough left the hospital. He managed to evade law enforcement for more than a week.
Eventually, a tip led Coos County sheriff’s deputies to a branch of the Coquille River just outside of Powers, where they had been told Yarbrough was camping on a small island.
While patrolling the area on June 23, they saw the occupants of a flatbed truck duck their heads as deputies passed by. After stopping the vehicle, they found Yarbrough inside, along with 48-year-old Tina Rossback, who was charged with harboring a fugitive.
Coos Bay Police Officer Scott Rogers, who had taken the initial report from April Yarbrough about the weapons in the home, interviewed him at the Coos County Jail shortly after his arrest.
He said Yarbrough described himself as a “prepper” who built the bunker and obtained the weapons to protect his family. The term prepper is used to describe individuals who prepare themselves to be self-reliant in worst-case situations.
Pettey said that didn’t matter.
“Whether he is a prepper or not a prepper, you can’t build pipe bombs without the proper permits from ATF or other agencies, which he didn’t have,” he said.
Yarbrough chose not to take the stand, and was briefly seen wiping away tears during the trial.
Sentencing has been scheduled for 8:30 a.m. on Dec. 12.
Reporter Thomas Moriarty can be reached at 541-269-1222, ext. 240, or by email at thomas.moriarty@theworldlink.com. Follow him on Twitter: @ThomasDMoriarty.
Post a comment as anonymous
Report
Watch this discussion.
(0) comments
Welcome to the discussion.
Log In