PHOENIX — An Arizona jury has convicted Cleophus Cooksey Jr. of eight murder counts stemming from a series of fatal shootings across the metro Phoenix area in late 2017, including the violent demise of his own mother and stepfather. On Thursday, a jury found Cooksey guilty on 14 counts, including first-degree murder, robbery, kidnapping, and sexual assault. As reported by AP News, he now faces a possible death sentence at his sentencing, scheduled for Monday.
These murders cast a shadow of fear over Phoenix, rekindling memories of two earlier serial shooting cases from 2015 that collectively unsettled the city, with this latest string of deadly encounters occurring stealthily until Cooksey's arrest in 2018. Victims of these harrowing events ranged from two men found slain in their car in a parking lot to a woman discovered posthumously in an alley after suffering sexual assault, with Cooksey's DNA being found on her body, as per AP News.
The court's decision has been met with an outpouring of emotion from those who lost loved ones to Cooksey's actions, with Adriana Rodriguez recounting to FOX 10 Phoenix that "He took my mom. The only support system that I had," while Eric Hampton, a friend of the defendant's family members who were killed, referred to Cooksey as a monster, having been visibly unsympathetic during trial proceedings, quoting Hampton's statement, "He doesn't have any heart at all. The way, you know, to actually do these things to people. And actually, the worst part, kill your own mom is just -- he's a monster."
Cooksey's conviction concludes one chapter of a city's trauma while mirroring its past horrors, and as Phoenix braces for another trial with Aaron Juan Saucedo, who has been charged with murder across nine cases in the city, it remains ensnared in a haunting, albeit familiar, wait for justice and resolution, AP News stated.
