Trey Waters received a 65-year prison sentence after investigators linked three robberies through video, witnesses, physical evidence and a firearm.
PHOENIX, Ariz. — A surveillance trail that began across multiple Phoenix crime scenes and ended with an arrest outside another convenience store helped lead to a 65-year prison sentence for Trey Waters, who was convicted of 15 felonies in a 2021 robbery series.
The sentence, announced Sept. 8 by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, represents the end of a case that investigators built by connecting evidence from three violent incidents between April 12 and May 9, 2021. Waters, 34, was arrested May 10, 2021, after police said video, victims and witnesses helped identify him. Prosecutors later told jurors the robberies involved a hotel-room attack, the armed beating of a food vendor and an attempted convenience-store robbery in which a clerk was shot multiple times. Two people were shot during the series, and both survived.
Long before the jury heard the case, detectives were looking for links between crime scenes that were miles apart and involved different victims. After the April 12 hotel robbery, investigators reviewed surveillance footage from the area. FOX 10 Phoenix reported at the time that police noticed a red Chevrolet Camaro with dark-tinted windows and chrome wheels, though the available video showed only part of the license plate. The hotel incident itself was severe: authorities said a gunman forced his way into a room near Interstate 10 and 51st Avenue, struck a male victim with a firearm, shot him in the neck, restrained a woman with duct tape and took money.
A second robbery about two weeks later widened the investigation. Police said a food vendor, described in early reports as an ice cream truck driver, was robbed at gunpoint near 24th Street and South Mountain Avenue. The vendor was struck in the face with the weapon, and the gunman also threatened women at the scene. Unlike the first incident, no one was shot there, but investigators were now dealing with another armed confrontation in which a victim was beaten and bystanders were threatened. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office later included that episode in the same prosecution that covered the hotel attack and the convenience-store shooting.
The third crime produced the clearest video account. On May 9, Waters entered a convenience store near 40th Street and Southern Avenue carrying a bag of peanuts, according to prosecutors. Surveillance footage showed him hand the clerk a dollar. When the register opened, he threw a brown bag onto the counter, drew a handgun and readied it. The clerk backed away. Prosecutors said Waters fired twice in her direction and, while leaving, fired again while she was on the floor. The woman sustained multiple serious injuries but survived. The video gave investigators both a record of the shooting and a detailed view of the person they were trying to identify.
Within a day, detectives said they had enough to act. The county attorney’s office said Phoenix police combined the surveillance footage with statements from victims and witnesses to identify Waters. Officers from the department’s Special Assignment Unit located him on May 10 as he was about to enter another convenience store. Authorities said Waters was carrying the same gun used in the previous shootings. Contemporary reporting placed the arrest near Central and Sunland avenues and said Waters was taken into custody without incident. For investigators, the arrest did more than stop the immediate search for a suspect; it also created an opportunity to compare items in Waters’ possession with evidence from the earlier scenes.
The search of Waters’ vehicle supplied some of the case’s most concrete corroborating evidence, according to prosecutors. Police found a passport stolen from one of the robbery victims and a shirt that matched clothing worn by the shooter in the convenience-store surveillance video. The county attorney’s office also credited one of Waters’ family members with helping identify him. Together, those details gave the prosecution several different kinds of proof to present: witness testimony, surveillance images, property linked to a victim, clothing tied to video evidence and the firearm authorities said had been used in the shootings. The public sentencing announcement did not describe forensic testing on the gun or identify which witness supplied each part of the case.
That evidence was eventually presented in a trial that was substantially larger than the initial arrest announcement suggested. Police originally booked Waters on 10 felony counts in May 2021, according to contemporaneous reports. By trial, prosecutors put 15 counts before the jury. Deputy County Attorney Bryn Barasha and the prosecution team called 27 witnesses and introduced nearly 200 exhibits, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said. The office did not release a complete exhibit list with its sentencing announcement, but it highlighted the surveillance footage, recovered passport and clothing, along with the investigation that tied Waters to the separate crimes.
Jurors found Waters guilty on every count. The verdicts included one count of first-degree burglary, three counts of armed robbery, eight counts of aggravated assault, one count of kidnapping, one count of attempted armed robbery and one count of attempted second-degree murder. Prosecutors classified the burglary, armed robbery, kidnapping and attempted murder counts as Class 2 dangerous felonies, while the aggravated-assault and attempted-robbery counts were Class 3 dangerous felonies. The county attorney’s office did not publish a detailed sentencing calculation showing how the individual counts combined into the 65-year term, so the structure of the total sentence cannot be determined from the release alone.
The breadth of the verdict also shows how the case moved beyond a single dramatic piece of surveillance video. The convenience-store recording documented one of the shootings, but the jury was asked to decide criminal charges arising from three separate encounters and multiple victims. The hotel case involved a shooting, a robbery and the restraint of a woman. The vendor robbery involved an armed beating and threats to others. The final store incident involved an attempted robbery and repeated gunfire. The 15 guilty verdicts therefore reflected conduct spread across the entire series, not only the attack that was captured most clearly on camera.
Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell said the result was a “team effort” involving prosecutors, Phoenix police, witnesses and the family member who assisted in identifying Waters. She said the guilty verdicts and lengthy sentence sent a message about accountability for armed violence. Her office specifically noted that police caught Waters before he could hurt anyone else, pointing to the circumstances of his arrest outside another convenience store. The names of the shooting victims and other victims were not released in the sentencing announcement, and the public materials reviewed for this story did not state whether any of them addressed the court during sentencing.
More than five years separated the robbery spree from the sentence that concluded the prosecution. In 2021, the public record centered on an arrest made one day after a clerk was shot. In 2026, prosecutors described a completed trial built on dozens of witnesses and nearly 200 exhibits, followed by guilty verdicts on all 15 counts. Waters is now serving a 65-year prison term, while the county attorney’s Sept. 8 announcement stands as the latest confirmed public development in the case.
Author note: Last updated October 20, 2026.