{"id":254148,"date":"2025-09-25T17:51:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T17:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/254148\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T17:51:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T17:51:09","slug":"man-accused-of-8-fatal-shootings-in-phoenix-area-faces-jury-verdict-following-murder-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/254148\/","title":{"rendered":"Man accused of 8 fatal shootings in Phoenix area faces jury verdict following murder trial"},"content":{"rendered":"

PHOENIX<\/strong> \u2013 A man tried for murder after he was accused of killing eight people in the metro Phoenix area in 2017 is set to hear a jury’s verdict against him on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Cleophus Cooksey Jr.’s<\/a> trial came more than seven years after the killings due to repeated delays caused by the pandemic.<\/p>\n

The 43-year-old is accused of murder and other charges stemming from the fatal shootings in Phoenix and nearby Glendale over a three-week span. If he is convicted, prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty.<\/p>\n

Cooksey has said the allegations against him are false and pleaded not guilty. <\/p>\n

The first of the eight killings happened Nov. 27, 2017. By that point, Cooksey had been out of prison for four months after serving time for his role in a 2001 strip club robbery that turned deadly.<\/p>\n

Cooksey knew some of the victims intimately, but others were strangers. Police never released a motive.<\/p>\n

The key to the case came when police were called to a blood-spattered apartment where they arrested Cooksey on suspicion of killing his mother and stepfather, authorities said.<\/p>\n

Evidence found there linked him to four other killings, they said. Police found a gun used in several of the crimes, a necklace belonging to a victim and the vehicle keys of a woman whose partially nude body was found in an alley.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX \u2013 A man tried for murder after he was accused of killing eight people in the metro…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":254149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,1589,61,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-254148","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-az","11":"tag-phoenix","12":"tag-u-s-news","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115266210336691719","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}