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- Dancers at an Arizona club feared they were being targeted — and then one was killed</p>
<p>Tim StellohJuly 13, 2025 at 9:03 PM</p>
<p>Justine Goode / NBC News; Getty Images</p>
<p>Beginning six years ago, a series of armed robberies left dancers at a Phoenix strip club shaken.</p>
<p>In 2023, one of those dancers who was robbed — Mercedes Vega — was kidnapped and brutally murdered. She was found beaten, shot and burned in the back seat of a Chevrolet Malibu on a highway east of Phoenix. Bleach was poured down her throat, authorities said.</p>
<p>Her family thought the crimes were connected, and they waited more than two years for answers. Now, authorities believe that one of the suspects in Vega's killing is the same man who was charged in her robbery case.</p>
<p>Vega had identified Cudjoe Young as the masked assailant who robbed her at gunpoint outside her Phoenix apartment building, according to a police report. He was charged with armed robbery, pleaded not guilty and was released on bond. His current and previous lawyers have declined to comment.</p>
<p>Vega was supposed to testify about the robbery at a court hearing scheduled for the day she was found dead, her mother said.</p>
<p>Tom and Erika Pillsbury hold a picture of their late daughter, Mercedes Vega, as they pose for a portrait in their living room on June 13 in San Tan Valley, Ariz. (Megan Mendoza / USA TODAY / REUTERS)</p>
<p>The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office is now recommending that Young be charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit kidnapping in Vega's death, according to a probable cause statement filed last month in that county's superior court.</p>
<p>For Vega's mother, the latest development brought a measure of relief.</p>
<p>"We've felt like we've been drowning in a sea of despair and grief for two and a half years," Erika Pillsbury said. "And now we've been thrown a life preserver. The people that are responsible for murdering my little daughter are hopefully going to face justice."</p>
<p>Two other suspects have been accused in Vega's death. The Maricopa County Attorney's Office filed charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping, armed robbery and theft against Jared Gray, according to a June 20 complaint. Gray was in custody in Georgia on unrelated charges and has not been extradited to Arizona, a spokesman for the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office said.</p>
<p>A third person, Sencere Hayes, was charged in November with first-degree murder, kidnapping, armed robbery and theft in connection with Vega's killing. He has pleaded not guilty.</p>
<p>Authorities have provided few details about the connection between the men, though the probable cause statement identified a geographic link — Chattanooga, Tennessee. Young is from the city, the statement says, and Hayes and Gray traveled to Phoenix from there.</p>
<p>The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office declined to comment. A spokesperson for the county attorney's office said it is reviewing potential charges against Young, 29, but would not comment on the robbery case, which it is prosecuting and is scheduled to take to trial on July 29. It isn't clear why the case has taken so long to adjudicate.</p>
<p>Lawyers for Hayes and Young did not respond to requests for comment. Court records do not list an attorney for Gray. In an interview with authorities, he denied ever having been to Arizona, the probable cause statement shows.</p>
<p>A terrifying incident close to home</p>
<p>At 4:15 a.m. on Oct. 12, 2020, Vega was parking outside her apartment building after work when a masked man ran toward her, drew a gun and demanded her belongings, according to a Phoenix Police Department incident report.</p>
<p>The man grabbed Vega's phone and held it to her face to try and unlock it, but failed because the facial-recognition feature wasn't set up, Vega's mother recalled her daughter telling her. When he ordered her to enter her PIN, Vega resisted, Pillsbury said.</p>
<p>"He shoved her to the ground, told her he'd kill her and held the gun to her face," Pillsbury said.</p>
<p>Mercedes Vega. (Erika Pillsbury)</p>
<p>Vega complied, Pillsbury said, and the man took everything — car keys, wallet, phone and a bag holding hundreds of dollars. With the phone unlocked, the man stole more money through a cash transfer app, according to the report.</p>
<p>Vega was so distraught, Pillsbury recalled, that "you couldn't walk up behind her without her jumping."</p>
<p>Within days, Pillsbury said, Vega moved somewhere she thought had better security. The new apartment was on the second floor, Pillsbury said, and had a parking garage that required a key fob for access.</p>
<p>Three years later, that garage was the last place Vega would be seen alive.</p>
<p>Another dancer says she was likely tracked</p>
<p>Vega, who performed at the Phoenix strip club Le Girls and was saving to become a certified personal trainer, wasn't the venue's only dancer who said they'd been targeted after a shift. In the months before and after Vega's robbery, two other women said a masked man held them up — or tried to hold them up — at gunpoint, according to interviews with former dancers and police reports.</p>
<p>One former dancer who said she was robbed didn't know Vega well, but asked Vega to describe her attacker.</p>
<p>After Vega described a man with gloves, a ski mask and a hoodie who was taller than her — Vega was 5-foot-8 — the former dancer said she believed they'd likely been targeted by the same person. (The woman asked NBC News not to identify her because she no longer works as a dancer.)</p>
<p>Around 4:30 a.m. on Nov. 2, 2019, she said, a masked assailant appeared in front of her aunt's condo in a quiet part of Scottsdale, a wealthy suburb east of Phoenix, and pointed a gun in her face. He took her bag and fled.</p>
<p>Afterward, the woman said, she banged so hard on her aunt's front door that her knuckles bled.</p>
<p>Photographs of Mercedes Vega, who was killed at the age of 22, hang on a wall in her parents' living room in San Tan Valley, Ariz. (Megan Mendoza/The Republic / USA TODAY Network via Reuters Co)</p>
<p>The former dancer dialed 911 and told the responding officers that she believed the gunman had likely tracked her from the club and knew her routine. She said she asked police to review video from Le Girls to see if she had been followed, but never heard if they did. Aside from a brief follow-up with a detective a few days later, the woman said she never heard from authorities again.</p>
<p>"It just seems like there's really nothing we can do," the former dancer said the detective told her.</p>
<p>There have been no arrests in the robbery, and the woman has accused authorities of failing to properly investigate.</p>
<p>"I'm angry and frustrated he hasn't faced any consequences," she said.</p>
<p>A spokesman for the Scottsdale Police Department, which investigated the robbery, said the agency examines crimes as thoroughly as it can and that investigators did the best they could with the information they had at the time.</p>
<p>According to Aaron Bolin, the Scottsdale police spokesman, the detective who investigated recalled that when the crime occurred, the victim was unsure if she had been followed. So the detective did not request the club's security video, Bolin said.</p>
<p>After NBC News contacted the department about the allegations, Bolin said investigators looked into whether that case was connected to the others. No link was found based on the available evidence, Bolin said.</p>
<p>A club on edge and an arrest</p>
<p>On Nov. 16, 2020, a third dancer was targeted. Vega's friend and co-worker, Jelena Gamboa, recalled the woman saying that after work, a man with a mask, hood and gloves emerged from behind a car in the garage of her Scottsdale apartment building and approached her with his gun drawn, she said. The woman did not respond to requests for comment.</p>
<p>When another car appeared, the gunman ran, according to a supplemental report included in Vega's incident report that cites Scottsdale police.</p>
<p>Dancers at Le Girls were on edge, Gamboa said, and kept an eye out for anyone who matched the man's description.</p>
<p>A month after the third incident, around 2 a.m. on a Tuesday in December 2020, a Le Girls manager told authorities that a man who matched the description was inside, according to the incident report.</p>
<p>Later that day, after Vega told authorities that the man was the person she believed to be her assailant, Young was arrested, the incident report shows. He denied knowing anything about the robberies but acknowledged going to Le Girls often.</p>
<p>Young was later charged with armed robbery in Vega's case and attempted armed robbery in the Nov. 16 case. He posted a nearly $50,000 bond for those cases and was released, according to the records.</p>
<p>Taken against her will</p>
<p>On April 16, 2023, Gamboa and Vega planned to hang out, but Vega later texted her friend with a crying emoji.</p>
<p>"Uber is $60," she wrote, according to a screenshot provided by Gamboa. "I might just go to work then. I feel like it's a sign I shouldn't go."</p>
<p>Shortly after, at 9:17 p.m., video from inside Vega's apartment complex captured her walking into the garage, according to the probable cause statement.</p>
<p>Security footage of Mercedes Vega. (via Dateline)</p>
<p>Two minutes later, Vega's car — a Dodge Charger — and the Malibu her body was later found in were captured on a camera leaving the garage at the same time, according to the statement. Blood found at the crime scene and in the Charger, which was discovered unoccupied roughly a mile away, "suggest the victim was physically assaulted, injured and taken from her parking garage against her will," according to the statement.</p>
<p>A fingerprint from a grocery bag in Vega's car initially produced no results. But in May 2024, it was matched to Hayes after he was arrested in Tennessee, according to the statement.</p>
<p>Authorities learned that Hayes flew to Arizona with Jared Gray on March 3 — a month before Vega's killing, the statement says. The person who owned the credit card used to buy their tickets denied making the purchase or knowing Hayes and Gray, the statement says, but told authorities that Young was allowed to use the card.</p>
<p>Two people told detectives that Young paid them to pick up the Malibu after it was bought through an online seller in March, the statement says. After Vega's death, authorities discovered a fingerprint on a plastic cup inside the car that belonged to Gray, according to the document.</p>
<p>Photographs of Mercedes Vega, displayed in her parents' living room. (Megan Mendoza/The Republic / USA TODAY Network via Reuters Co)</p>
<p>A day after Vega was found dead, Hayes and Gray left Arizona on a bus for Young's hometown of Chattanooga, the statement says. When authorities traveled there to interview them, Gray said he had never been to Arizona and denied knowing Young or Hayes, the statement says.</p>
<p>Hayes said he knew Young from Chattanooga. He told investigators he'd gone to Arizona for business, the statement says, but refused to say who he'd gone with.</p>
<p>Hayes' trial is scheduled for 2027.</p>
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