An Arizona man brutally beat, shot and burned an exotic dancer to death, leaving her body to be found in a burning car on the interstate last year, police said.
Sencere Hayes, 22, was arrested on a first-degree murder charge last week for the horrific killing — bringing joy to the parents of Mercedes Vega, who said for the past year it felt like they would never see justice for their slain daughter.
“Now I know the person who did this to her is going to pay for it,” mom Erika Pillsbury, told NBC News.
Vega, who worked at a Phoenix strip club but had plans of becoming a personal trainer, was last seen in Tempe with her friends the night of April 16, 2023.
The 22-year-old’s body was found the next day in the back seat of a Chevy Malibu that had been abandoned on the shoulder of Interstate 10 near Tonopah, about 50 miles west of Phoenix, Fox 10 reported.
Vega’s autopsy revealed she had been beaten, shot and burned.
Her face also appeared to have been doused in bleach, according to a forensic pathologist who reviewed her autopsy for NBC.
Her mother recalled the state of shock the family was in when authorities delivered the news that Mercedes was dead.
“We called the detective, and we were like, ‘Explain to us what is going on.’ That’s when he told us that Mercedes was abducted and that she had been hit over the head and forced into a vehicle and that she was shot through her right arm and that she had been burned alive,” she told Fox 10.
Vega’s parents said their daughter did not know Hayes, and that he likely abducted her from a parking garage near her home because of blood they found near her car.
Her family was also told that as far as other suspects, “there is more to come.”
“What gives us hope is that she is going to be vindicated, and she is going to get justice,” her father Tom Pillsbury told Fox 10.