Two shooting victims survived a monthlong series of attacks that prosecutors said escalated from a hotel robbery to a convenience-store shooting.
PHOENIX, Ariz. — Three robberies over 28 days in 2021 left two people shot, a food vendor beaten and several others threatened before police arrested Trey Waters, who has now been sentenced to 65 years in prison after a jury found him guilty on all 15 felony counts.
The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office announced the sentence Sept. 8, more than five years after the attacks. The case covered violence against different victims in different parts of Phoenix, beginning inside a hotel room and ending at a convenience store where a clerk was shot as she tried to get away. Prosecutors said Waters, 34, was convicted of first-degree burglary, three armed robberies, eight aggravated assaults, kidnapping, attempted armed robbery and attempted second-degree murder. Both people who were shot survived.
The first attack was reported April 12, 2021, at a hotel near 51st Avenue and Interstate 10. Authorities said Waters forced his way into a room occupied by a man and a woman and demanded property. Police reports from the time said he struck the man in the face with a gun before shooting him in the neck. He then restrained the woman by binding her hands with duct tape and left with money, according to prosecutors. The man suffered serious injuries but survived. Investigators began reviewing surveillance footage around the hotel, looking for a suspect and a vehicle connected to the robbery.
That early investigation produced a lead involving a red Chevrolet Camaro with dark-tinted windows and chrome wheels, according to FOX 10 Phoenix’s 2021 reporting. Police could not read the full license plate from the available footage, but the vehicle became one piece of the developing inquiry. The hotel robbery also established a combination of conduct that later appeared in the broader prosecution: use of a gun, violence against a victim, theft and threats against another person. At that stage, however, police were still investigating a single armed robbery rather than the three-incident case that eventually went before a jury.
On April 25, roughly two weeks after the hotel attack, police said another armed robbery occurred near 24th Street and South Mountain Avenue. The victim was a food vendor, described in early news reports as an ice cream truck driver. Authorities said Waters robbed the vendor at gunpoint and struck the victim in the face with the firearm. He also pointed the gun at women who were nearby, according to prosecutors. No one was reported shot in that encounter, but the incident added more alleged victims and another location to the investigation. Prosecutors later charged conduct from that robbery alongside the hotel case and the shooting that followed.
The final robbery in the series occurred May 9 at a convenience store near 40th Street and Southern Avenue. Prosecutors said Waters approached the counter with a bag of peanuts and gave the clerk a dollar. The transaction appeared routine until the register opened. Surveillance footage showed Waters throw a brown bag onto the counter, pull out a handgun and prepare it to fire, the county attorney’s office said. The clerk backed away as he fired twice. As he left the store, prosecutors said, he fired again while she was on the floor. She suffered multiple serious injuries but survived, becoming the second shooting victim linked to the robbery series.
The survival of both shooting victims is one of the few personal outcomes prosecutors have made public. Early police reporting said the hotel victim and the convenience-store clerk were hospitalized with serious injuries after the attacks, while the vendor’s injuries were described as not life-threatening. Authorities did not release detailed medical updates in the sentencing announcement, and the victims’ names were not included there. That leaves the criminal case, rather than their later recoveries, as the clearest public record of what followed. The office’s account focuses on the acts charged, the evidence gathered and the verdicts, while avoiding further detail about the victims’ private lives.
That attack changed the pace of the investigation. Detectives had a close surveillance recording from inside the store, in addition to evidence and witness accounts from the earlier robberies. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said investigators used the video together with statements from victims and witnesses to identify Waters. The office later disclosed that one of Waters’ own family members helped identify him as well. Police moved quickly after the store shooting, locating him the next day before authorities said another confrontation could occur.
On May 10, officers with the Phoenix Police Department’s Special Assignment Unit arrested Waters as he was about to enter another convenience store, prosecutors said. Authorities said he had the same gun used in the earlier shootings. Contemporary reports placed the arrest near Central and Sunland avenues and said it happened without incident. A subsequent search of Waters’ car produced additional evidence: police found a passport stolen from one of the robbery victims and a shirt matching what the shooter wore in the May 9 surveillance footage. Those items helped prosecutors connect the suspect in custody to evidence from more than one crime scene.
The case that reached trial was broader than the first booking announcement in 2021. At the time of his arrest, police said Waters faced 10 felony charges. The final trial involved 15 counts. Deputy County Attorney Bryn Barasha and the prosecution team presented testimony from 27 witnesses and introduced nearly 200 exhibits, according to the county attorney’s office. The public sentencing announcement did not identify every witness or catalog every exhibit, but it emphasized the accumulated evidence from the three robberies, including video, recovered property and clothing. The jury ultimately found Waters guilty on every count prosecutors put before it.
Those verdicts reflected the different harms alleged across the three incidents. The first-degree burglary and kidnapping charges were tied to conduct in the hotel-room attack; the armed-robbery, aggravated-assault and other counts covered the wider series involving several victims. Prosecutors listed the burglary, three armed robberies, kidnapping and attempted second-degree murder as Class 2 dangerous felonies. Eight aggravated-assault counts and one attempted armed-robbery count were listed as Class 3 dangerous felonies. The county attorney’s office did not publish a count-by-count sentencing worksheet or explain in its announcement how the individual terms were combined to reach 65 years.
Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell said the all-count guilty verdict and lengthy sentence demonstrated accountability for violent gun crime. She also credited the prosecution team, Phoenix police, witnesses and the Waters family member who assisted investigators. Her statement drew particular attention to the arrest outside another convenience store, describing police as having stopped Waters before anyone else could be hurt. The office did not identify the victims by name in its sentencing release, and reviewed public reports do not establish whether they appeared or spoke at the sentencing hearing.
The September 2026 sentence gives the robbery series a legal endpoint that was not known when the first victim was shot in April 2021. Over the following weeks, more victims were added to the case, then surveillance and witness evidence led police to Waters one day after the final attack. Five years later, a jury’s 15 guilty verdicts and the 65-year sentence completed the prosecution. Waters is now serving that prison term; no additional proceeding tied to the three robberies was announced in the county attorney’s latest public statement.
Author note: Last updated October 20, 2026.