PHOENIX — An Arizona jury convicted a man Thursday on eight murder charges for carrying out a string of shootings in metro Phoenix over a three-week span in 2017.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Cleophus Cooksey Jr.

The victims in Phoenix and nearby Glendale included Cooksey’s mother and stepfather, a security guard walking to his girlfriend’s apartment and a woman whose body was found in an alley after she was sexually assaulted.

Cooksey, described by police as an aspiring musician, knew some of the victims but wasn’t acquainted with others, authorities said. He has said the allegations against him were false.

The first of the eight killings occurred four months after Cooksey was released from prison on a manslaughter conviction for his participation in a 2001 strip club robbery in which an accomplice was fatally shot.

In earlier years, two other serial shooting cases sparked fear in metro Phoenix, prompting some people to stay indoors after dark or stay off freeways where they occurred. Unlike those cases, the killings Cooksey is accused of did not occur over a matter of months and generated no publicity until his arrest.