A jury convicted Trey Waters on 15 felony counts tied to three Phoenix robberies that left two shooting victims seriously wounded.

PHOENIX, Ariz. — Trey Waters has been sentenced to 65 years in prison after a Maricopa County jury convicted him of a series of armed robberies in Phoenix that included two shootings and attacks on several other victims, prosecutors announced Sept. 8.

The sentence closes a case that began with three violent robberies over less than a month in spring 2021 and later grew into a prosecution involving 27 witnesses and nearly 200 exhibits. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said Waters, 34, was found guilty on every count submitted to the jury: first-degree burglary, three armed robberies, eight aggravated assaults, kidnapping, attempted armed robbery and attempted second-degree murder. Both people who were shot survived, though authorities said they suffered serious injuries.

The final robbery, on May 9, 2021, became a central part of the case because surveillance video captured the encounter inside a convenience store near 40th Street and Southern Avenue. Prosecutors said Waters approached the counter with a bag of peanuts and handed the clerk a dollar, creating the appearance of an ordinary purchase. When the clerk opened the register, Waters threw a brown bag onto the counter, produced a handgun and prepared the weapon to fire. The clerk began backing away. Waters fired at her twice, then fired again as he ran from the store while she was on the floor, according to the county attorney’s account. The office said the clerk suffered multiple serious gunshot injuries but survived.

The convenience-store shooting was not an isolated episode. Prosecutors tied Waters to two earlier robberies that unfolded in different parts of Phoenix. On April 12, 2021, authorities said he forced his way into a hotel room near 51st Avenue and Interstate 10. Inside, he struck a man with a gun, shot him in the neck and restrained a woman by binding her hands with duct tape before leaving with money. The man survived. The woman was not reported shot. Contemporary police accounts described the incident as the first in the series investigators later connected to Waters.

Roughly two weeks later, another robbery brought investigators a second set of victims and evidence. Authorities said Waters confronted a food vendor near 24th Street and South Mountain Avenue, robbed the vendor at gunpoint and struck the vendor with the firearm. Prosecutors also said Waters pointed the gun at two women during that encounter. Early police reports described the victim as an ice cream truck driver and placed the robbery during the afternoon of April 25. That attack did not produce another shooting victim, but it became part of the broader pattern prosecutors presented when the case reached trial.

The first police investigation also developed a vehicle lead before the final store shooting. FOX 10 Phoenix reported in May 2021 that detectives reviewing video from the hotel area noticed a red Chevrolet Camaro with dark-tinted windows and chrome wheels, although only part of the license plate could be read. Investigators later compared footage and information from the separate robbery scenes as they worked to determine whether the same person was responsible. Police publicly announced Waters’ arrest after the third robbery, saying the cases had been linked through investigative work that included surveillance evidence and witness information. That sequence matters because the eventual prosecution treated the robberies as a connected course of conduct rather than three unrelated cases, while still requiring proof for the individual crimes and victims reflected in the final 15-count verdict.

The investigation accelerated after the May 9 convenience-store shooting. Phoenix police used surveillance footage together with statements from victims and witnesses to identify Waters, according to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. Officers arrested him the next day. Prosecutors said members of the Phoenix Police Department’s Special Assignment Unit encountered Waters as he was about to enter another convenience store and that he had the same gun used in the earlier shootings. Police said at the time that the arrest was made without incident. The timing of the arrest became one of the case’s most consequential facts because authorities said he was armed and approaching another business when officers moved in.

A search of Waters’ vehicle added physical evidence that prosecutors later used to connect the separate episodes. The county attorney’s office said police found a passport stolen from one of the earlier victims and a shirt matching the one worn by the gunman in the convenience-store surveillance video. The office also said one of Waters’ family members helped identify him during the investigation. Those pieces of evidence were added to the surveillance recordings and witness accounts that authorities had collected from the three crime scenes. The prosecution did not rest on one identification or one recording; at trial, Deputy County Attorney Bryn Barasha and the prosecution team called 27 witnesses and introduced nearly 200 exhibits.

The jury ultimately returned guilty verdicts on 15 felony counts. Prosecutors categorized the first-degree burglary, the three armed robberies, the kidnapping and the attempted second-degree murder as Class 2 dangerous felonies. The eight aggravated assaults and the attempted armed robbery were listed as Class 3 dangerous felonies. The county attorney’s office did not provide a count-by-count breakdown of the 65-year sentence in its public announcement, and the available sentencing release did not specify how individual prison terms were structured. What it did make clear was that Waters was convicted after a trial rather than through a plea agreement and that the sentence followed guilty verdicts on every charge presented to the jury.

The sentence announced in September 2026 came more than five years after the robberies and Waters’ arrest. That interval separates the immediate police response from the final punishment now imposed by the court. Early reporting in May 2021 focused on a suspect accused of three robberies and booked on 10 felony charges. By the time the case reached its conclusion, the jury had considered an expanded set of 15 counts reflecting conduct against several victims across the three incidents. The county attorney’s office said the trial record included testimony from victims and other witnesses as well as physical and video evidence gathered during the investigation.

Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell said the verdicts and sentence reflected the combined work of prosecutors, Phoenix police, witnesses and the family member who helped identify Waters. She said the result showed that people who use guns to terrorize victims would be held accountable. Her office also emphasized that police arrested Waters before another potential encounter could unfold at the convenience store he was approaching on May 10, 2021. The statement did not release the names of the injured clerk, the hotel victims, the food vendor or the other women threatened during the robbery series, and public reports reviewed for this story did not establish whether they spoke at sentencing.

Waters is now under a 65-year prison sentence for the Phoenix robbery series. The county attorney’s office has not publicly identified an additional sentencing proceeding in the case or announced a further trial tied to the same three robberies. The victims in both shootings survived, and the September announcement marked the principal public update in the case: a jury conviction on all counts followed by a sentence measured in decades.

Author note: Last updated October 20, 2026.