Man charged in homicide of Arizona dancer is learned responsible of robbing her 3 years earlier than her killing

A jury convicted an Arizona man Wednesday in the gunpoint theft of an appealing dancer who used to be killed three years later in a homicide role that officers hiss he utilized with two varied of us.

Cudjoe Younger, 30, used to be learned responsible of armed theft and tried armed theft in reference to separate crimes focusing on two ladies folks, including Mercedes Vega, in 2020, in step with court docket records.

The Maricopa County Attorney’s Residing of enterprise, which tried Younger, declined to comment Wednesday evening. Younger’s attorney, Candice Shoemaker, didn’t instantly retort to construct a question to for comment Wednesday evening.

Younger also faces separate costs of homicide, kidnapping, arson, theft, conspiracy and armed theft with a deadly weapon linked to Vega’s killing in 2023. Younger and his alleged accomplices, Jared Gray and Sencere Hayes, comprise pleaded not responsible.

Vega, 22, used to be learned burned and shot, with blunt force injuries, in an abandoned automobile on an interstate west of Phoenix on April 17, 2023.

Prosecutors comprise alleged that the men killed Vega to cease her from cooperating with authorities or as retaliation for cooperating. Vega’s mother has acknowledged her daughter used to be scheduled to testify in the theft case the day she used to be learned dumb.

A masked, armed man robbed Vega outside her Phoenix rental building after she had executed a gradual-evening shift at a neighborhood club on Oct. 12, 2020, police records recount. A masked, armed man tried to rob a second dancer from the club in that lady’s Phoenix-build parking storage weeks later but fled after a automobile regarded, authorities comprise acknowledged.

A Third lady from the club steered NBC News that she believes the the same masked man centered her outside her aunt’s Phoenix-build rental unit in 2019. She’d true executed a shift, she acknowledged, when the man regarded outside the house, pointed a gun in her face and took her belongings.

A spokesman for the Scottsdale Police Department, which investigated that theft, acknowledged there used to be no evidence to hyperlink it to the assorted incidents.

In the theft trial, the prosecutor pointed to cell tower records and varied digital evidence that she acknowledged linked Younger to the crimes. Younger’s attorney described about a of that evidence as unreliable and acknowledged her shopper used to be not “the man with the gun.”