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YUMA, Ariz. (AP) — The Latest on the verdict against an Arizona man charged with killing six people (all times local):
3:55 p.m.
A jury has convicted an Arizona prisoner in the gruesome killings of his best friend, the man's girlfriend and her four children 12 years ago.
The jury on Tuesday found 50-year-old Preston Strong guilty of six counts of first-degree murder after a monthslong trial. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, and the jury will begin considering Strong's eligibility Friday.
Prosecutors said Strong killed 35-year-old Luis Rios, 29-year-old Adrienne Heredia and her four children, ages 6 to 13, in Yuma in 2005 over money.
They said he suffocated Heredia and three of her children and shot her youngest child and Rios.
Strong is already serving life in prison for killing a local doctor, who was strangled and bludgeoned in his home in 2007.
Strong has denied the charges. His defense argued that the evidence linking him to the killings was flimsy.
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2:35 p.m.
Jurors in Yuma say they've reached a verdict in the trial of a man accused of killing six people in 2005.
The Yuma County Superior Court jury began deliberations Monday and reached a verdict early Tuesday afternoon in the case of Preston Strong, who's already imprisoned in a separate 2007 killing.
Strong already is imprisoned after being convicted of killing a physician in Yuma in 2007.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in the current case, calling it a methodical and gruesome set of killings in which four people were suffocated and two others shot to death over money.
Strong was charged in the killings of 35-year-old Luis Rios, 29-year-old Adrienne Heredia and her four children — ages 6 to 13 — at a Yuma house.
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