A 32-year-old Vancouver man was sentenced Friday in Clark County Superior Court to 17 months incarceration for hijacking a C-Tran bus and trying to divert it to Portland.
Anthony S. Lybeck pleaded guilty to a charge of second-degree kidnapping. He also pleaded guilty to a charge of first-degree criminal trespass, a gross misdemeanor, in a separate case and received one year of suspended jail time.
Judge Suzan Clark also imposed 18 months of community custody in the kidnapping case and mental health and substance dependency evaluations and treatments.
Lybeck is set to be released despite the court agreeing to impose the prosecution’s recommended sentence. He received credit for the 602 days he’s already been jailed.
“Thank you for helping me through this, and I’m going to do better when I get out,” Lybeck said.
Defense attorney Therese Lavallee told the court her client is developmentally delayed, and he was likely under the influence of methamphetamine when he hijacked the bus on April 19, 2019.
Emergency dispatchers received a call at 6:06 p.m. about a bus driver on Route 72 who was being held hostage near Northeast Covington Road and Northeast Fourth Plain Boulevard. A man, later identified by police as Lybeck, boarded the bus, told the driver he was armed and demanded to be taken to Portland, according to the Vancouver Police Department.
The driver said she didn’t see a firearm but complied and took the southbound Interstate 205 onramp. She activated the bus’s emergency alarm to alert dispatchers to the situation, C-Tran spokeswoman Christine Selk previously told The Columbian.
Vancouver police responded and began pursuing the bus, which was reportedly traveling 48 mph in the middle lane, according to emergency radio traffic monitored at The Columbian. They performed a rolling roadblock in front of the bus to stop it near the north end of the Glenn Jackson Bridge.
The driver was not injured, and there were no other passengers on the bus at the time.
The driver chose not to address the court during Friday’s change of plea and sentencing hearing, but she told prosecutors that she agreed with the recommended 17-month sentence.
Lybeck was also sentenced in a 2019 case for taking a vehicle without permission, which was amended to the criminal trespass charge. Court records say a few days before the bus jacking, Lybeck was at the home of his girlfriend, who was sleeping. He went into her purse, took her car keys, and then stole her car. He returned the same day and told her the car belonged to him now, the records say.
