Just eight months after Brent Luyster Jr. was given a break in an assault case involving a knife, he allegedly fatally stabbed his stepfather at an Amboy residence.
The teenage son and namesake of convicted triple murderer Brent Luyster was arrested early Monday morning and booked into the Clark County juvenile detention center on suspicion of second-degree murder.
He is scheduled to make a first appearance on the allegation Tuesday morning in Clark County Superior Court.
Court records state the 17-year-old told a neighbor he stabbed his stepfather, identified as Luther M. Moore, 48, and thought he was dead. The neighbor called 911 and said Luyster told him that Moore was beating him with a broomstick.
Clark County sheriff’s deputies responded shortly after midnight to 28013 N.E. 419th St., Unit 1, for the reported assault, emergency dispatch records show. There, they found Luyster with blood on his clothing and a minor injury to his hand, according to an affidavit of probable cause.
Moore was found lying in the doorway of the residence with visible stab wounds to his back and side, the affidavit states.
Luyster declined to speak with investigators without an attorney, court records say.
Detectives said they could hear Luyster identifying himself in the recorded 911 call. He could also be heard saying that his stepfather was drunk and attacking him with a broom. Luyster reportedly said he stabbed his stepfather, and the knife broke off inside of him, according to the affidavit.
Previous incident
In September, Luyster was sentenced to 15 to 36 weeks in a juvenile facility after he slashed at and threatened to kill a man in May 2020 near the intersection of East 27th Street and Grand Boulevard in central Vancouver. No one was injured. He had been released from a juvenile facility about a month before the attack and was on parole.
At the time, the prosecution noted that Luyster was receiving a “really big break,” with a plea deal for third-degree assault in Clark County Juvenile Court. He originally faced an accusation of attempted second-degree murder in adult court, but the prosecution opted to file a charge of first-degree assault. Then, the case was transferred to juvenile court.
If he had been convicted on the original charge in adult court, Luyster would have faced over a decade in prison.
Clark County Prosecutor Tony Golik said Monday the facts of that case did not match up with a charge of first-degree assault; it was more appropriately charged as second-degree assault, a Class B felony, and then resolved as the Class C felony.
He declined to comment further on the 2020 case, because his office is reviewing this new case.
When he was 13, Luyster was briefly held in contempt of court after refusing to testify at his father’s triple-murder trial in November 2017.
The elder Luyster was on trial for the July 2016 murders of his best friend, Zachary David Thompson, 36; friend Joseph Mark LaMar, 38; and LaMar’s partner, Janell Renee Knight, 43, at LaMar’s home southeast of Woodland. He also shot Thompson’s partner, Breanne Leigh, then 32, in the face, but she survived.
The younger Luyster was an apparent eyewitness to the shootings.
A jury later convicted his father of three counts of aggravated first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder and one count each of first- and second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm. Luyster, 40, received three life sentences without the possibility of release, plus another nearly 54 years to run consecutively.
The elder Luyster, a known white supremacist, was convicted a year later on federal firearms charges and sentenced to serve another 10 years. A state database shows he is incarcerated at Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Aberdeen.
