Just last year, when Ameen Hurst was jailed and accused of four murders, he was prepared to crawl with the army across the prison floor, climb over barbed wire, and then escape for more than a week; This was all to avoid accountability. For his crimes that would leave him behind bars for most of his life.

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

Hurst repeated “Guilty” a total of 28 times while chained 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 years old, and accused of murdering four people and committing two armed robberies between late 2020 and early 2021. Law enforcement officials said he was affiliated with two of his allies, the Young Bag Chasers and the Young Face Arrangers. West and North Philadelphia gangs responsible for wave of violenceand was often willing to get 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 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 when Hurst ambushed him and hundreds of people watched as the gunshots rang out and the camera panned into the sky.

Later on March 11, Hurst opened fire on a group of associated youths. rival group “0toda4” in the 1400 block of North 76th Street. He sneaked up on them from a back alley and then unleashed a barrage of bullets, hitting four people and killing two: Naquan Smith, 24, and Tamir Brown, 17.

In the following days, according to video shared in court, Hurst sent a voice message on Instagram to one of Brown’s friends, telling him to “pick you up” and laughingly imitated the teenager’s last words: “I got shot! I got shot in the neck!”

He laughed again at the crime in a phone interview from prison the following month, telling a young woman on video that the shooting was “the funniest jaw I’ve ever done.”

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

But instead, he said, Hurst accidentally killed 20-year-old Rodney Hargrove. has nothing to do with their fights.

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

Hurst knew this too. In two separate video calls from prison, Hurst laughed as he mimed how he shot Hargrove.

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

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

Hurst sparked a citywide manhunt while awaiting trial in May 2023. he and another man escaped from prison. Deputy District Attorney Brett Zakeosian said Friday that Hurst will be on the run for 10 days, spending most of that time hiding in New York.

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

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

“As pleased as we are,” he said, “it is still difficult to imagine the lives of four young people being destroyed by a 16-year-old. “This in itself is a tragedy.”

And he said prison calls in which Hurst laughed about the murders showed “a frightening level of insensitivity and remorse.”

Hurst is the last one Long line of YBC/YFA members to be sentenced There were multiple shootings last year. He pleaded guilty to a total of four counts of third-degree murder, two counts of attempted murder, escape, multiple counts of conspiracy and unlawful possession of a weapon, and related charges.

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

Throughout the afternoon, Hurst sat calmly and without much expression on his face, periodically looking away to chew his nails. Her mother did the same in the courtroom gallery; He gently clasped his hands under his chin as he watched his son confess to all he had done.

At the end of the hearing, Hurst stood up and was voluntarily taken into custody. He is expected to be sentenced within two weeks.