More than a year after a young woman was found dead in the back of a burning car, police arrested her suspected killer.
Sencere Hayes, 22, allegedly poured bleach down the throat of Mercedes Vega – a 22-year-old exotic dancer in Phoenix – before shoving her body in the backseat of a Chevy Malibu set ablaze on a Tonopah, Nevada, roadside in spring 2023, investigators said, according to NBC News.
An autopsy revealed Vega had also been shot and beaten.
Vega's parents, Erika and Tom Pillsbury, said a detective showed up on their doorstep that April to let them know their daughter had been brutally murdered.
"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," Erika told KSAZ-TV.
"We didn't find out about the bleach in her throat until much later," added Tom, citing the autopsy findings.
After 17 months on the run, Hayes was taken into custody Monday in Tennessee, authorities announced in their plans to extradite him back to Arizona to face charges.
When the Pillsburys got news from the detective in charge of their daughter's case that a suspect in her murder was captured, "I could hear this elation in his voice," Erika recalled, "and he said, 'We got him. We got him.'"
It's unclear if Hayes allegedly acted alone.
"What gives us hope is that she is going to be vindicated, and she is going to get justice," Tom told the station.
Authorities did not elaborate on a motive or relationship between the purported killer and victim.
