Amin Hurst pleads guilty to four murders and prison escape

Just last year, when Amin Hurst was jailed and charged with four counts of murder, he was willing to crawl on the prison floor, climb over barbed wire and then run for more than a week – all in an attempt to avoid responsibility. for his crimes, which would have kept him behind bars for most of his life.

On Friday, Hurst, now 20, appeared before a judge and confessed to everything. Murders, robberies, escape. All.

“Guilty,” Hearst repeated a total of 28 times while chained to a wooden chair.

This scene took more than three years to create. Hurst was arrested in 2021 when he was just 16 years old and accused of killing four people and committing two armed robberies between late 2020 and early 2021. West and North Philadelphia gangs responsible for wave of violenceand was often willing to take a pistol to take aim at his enemies.

He first shot and killed 20-year-old Dayvoe Scruggs, an aspiring comedian and social media influencer. On the morning of December 24, 2020, Hearst followed Scruggs as he walked to catch the bus to work at Home Depot before shooting him at least 16 times. Scruggs was filming himself on Instagram Live as Hearst ambushed him, and hundreds of people watched as shots rang out and the camera panned to the sky.

Then, on March 11, 2021, Hearst opened fire on a group of youths associated with rival group “0toda4” in the 1400 block of North 76th Street. He sneaked up on them from an alley and then fired a barrage of bullets that struck four people, killing two: Naquan Smith, 24, and Tamir Brown, 17.

A few days later, according to video presented in court, Hearst sent one of Brown’s friends a voicemail on Instagram asking him to “get you, man” and laughingly imitating the teen’s last words: “I got it! They hit me in the neck!”

He laughed about the crime again during a jail call the following month, telling a young woman the shooting was “the funniest joke I’ve ever made,” video showed.

A week after the murders of Brown and Smith, Hearst and his YBC colleagues received word that one of their longtime rivals on 39th Street was about to be released from prison, said Assistant District Attorney Anthony Voci. On the night of March 18, 2021, he and his team drove up to Curran Fromhold Correctional Facility and spotted a young man waiting at the prison gates. Believing 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, Vocha said.

But instead, he said, Hearst mistakenly killed 20-year-old Rodney Hargrove. who had nothing to do with their feud.

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

Hearst knew this too. In two separate video calls from prison, Hearst laughed as he imitated shooting Hargrove.

“I thought it was Sid,” he said, referring to their competing goal. “However, we made the wrong (person).”

Hurst was arrested in April 2021 and charged with those murders and two separate gun robberies in West Philadelphia. And yet his crimes did not end there.

In May 2023, while awaiting trial, Hearst sparked a citywide manhunt when he and another man escaped from prison. Hearst will remain in hiding for 10 days, spending much of that time holed up in New York, Assistant District Attorney Brett Zakeossian said Friday.

While on the run, Hearst and his brother even rented a recording studio in Manhattan and recorded a new rap song, which he has since published online, Zakeosyan said.

Voci said investigators were pleased with the outcome of the case, mainly because the families of many of Hearst’s victims did not have to endure a lengthy trial.

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

And calls to prison, during which Hearst laughed about the murders, he said, show “a level of callousness and ruthlessness that is frightening.”

Hurst is the last long line of YBC/YFA members to be convicted numerous shootings over the past year. In total, he pleaded guilty to four counts of third-degree murder, two counts of attempted murder, escape, multiple counts of conspiracy and unlawful possession of a weapon and related offenses.

His lawyer, Gary Silver, declined to comment Friday. Relatives of the victims could not be contacted.

All day Hearst sat calmly and without any expression, periodically looking away and biting his nails. His mother did the same from the courtroom gallery, placing her hands tenderly under her chin and watching as her son confessed to everything 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.