Ameen Hurst pleads guilty to four counts of murder and prison break

Just last year, while Ameen Hurst was imprisoned and charged with four murders, he was willing to crawl armed across the prison floor, climb over barbed wire, then run for more than a week – all in – an attempt to avoid liability. for his crimes, which would have put him behind bars for most of his life.

On Friday, Hurst, now 20, sat before a judge and admitted everything. The murders, the robberies, the escape. All.

“Guilty,” Hurst repeated a total of 28 times while handcuffed to a wooden chair.

It was a scene more than three years in the making. Hurst was arrested in 2021, when he was just 16, and charged with murdering four people and committing two armed robberies between late 2020 and early 2021. Law enforcement officials said he was affiliated with the Young Bag Chasers and Young Make Arrangers, two allies. West and North Philadelphia gangs responsible for a wave of violenceand was often willing to step behind the gun to target his enemies.

First, he shot and killed 20-year-old Dyewou Scruggs, an aspiring comedian and social media influencer. On the morning of December 24, 2020, Hurst stalked Scruggs as he walked to catch a bus to work at Home Depot before shooting him at least 16 times. Scruggs was filming on Instagram Live when Hurst ambushed him and hundreds of people watched as shots rang out and the camera panned skyward.

Then on March 11, Hurst opened fire on a group of connected youths rival group “0toda4” on the 1400 block of North 76th Street. He snuck up on them from a back alley before unleashing a barrage of bullets that struck four people, killing two: Naquan Smith, 24, and Tamir Brown, 17.

In the following days, according to the video released in court, Hurst sent one of Brown’s friends a voice message on Instagram, telling him to “get up” and laughingly mimicking the teenager’s last words: “I’m hit! I’m hit in the neck!”

He laughed about the killing again in a prison call the following month, the video showed, telling a young woman that the shooting was “the funniest gag I’ve ever done.”

A week after they killed Brown and Smith, Hurst and YBC associates received a tip that one of their longtime rivals on 39th Street was about to be released from prison, Assistant District Attorney Anthony Voci said. On the night of March 18, 2021, he and his crew drove to the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility and saw a young man waiting outside the prison gates. Assuming he was their target, they chased him through the facility’s parking lot, then shot him 20 times before running him over with their car, Voci said.

But instead, he said, Hurst accidentally killed 20-year-old Rodney Hargrove – which had nothing to do with their quarrel.

“It was a case of mistaken identity,” Voci told Common Pleas Court Judge J. Scott O’Keefe.

And Hurst knew it. In two separate video calls from jail, Hurst laughed as he mimed shooting Hargrove.

“I thought it was Sid,” he said, referring to their rival target. “I got (the person) wrong though.”

Hurst was arrested in April 2021 and charged with those murders and two separate armed robberies in West Philly. And yet, this was not the end of his crimes.

In May 2023, while awaiting trial, Hurst launched a city-wide manhunt when he and another man escaped from prison. Hurst will be on the run for 10 days, spending much of that time hiding in New York, Assistant District Attorney Brett Zakeosian said Friday.

While persevering, Zakeosian said, Hurst even rented a recording studio with his brother in Manhattan and recorded a new rap song that he has since released online.

Voci said investigators are pleased with the outcome of the case, especially so that the families of Hurst’s many victims do not have to endure a lengthy trial.

“While we are pleased,” he said, “it is still hard to imagine that four young lives were taken by someone who was 16 years old. That is a tragedy in itself.”

And prison calls in which Hurst laughed about the murders, he said, show “a level of callousness and lack of remorse that is appalling.”

Hurst is the latest a long line of YBC/YFA members to be convicted of multiple shootings in the past year. In all, he pleaded guilty to four counts of third-degree murder, two counts of attempted murder, escape, numerous counts of conspiracy and illegal possession of weapons and related offenses.

His attorney, Gary Silver, declined to comment Friday. Family members of the victims could not be reached.

Throughout the afternoon, Hurst sat calm and expressionless, periodically looking away to chew his nails. His mother did the same from the courtroom gallery, her hands clasped lightly under her chin as she watched her son admit all he had done.

At the end of the hearing, Hurst stood up and voluntarily returned to custody. He is expected to be sentenced in two weeks.