Ameen Hurst pleads guilty to four murders, two robberies, and escaping from Philly’s jail

Just last year, while Ameen Hurst was jailed and accused of committing four murders, he was willing to army crawl across the jail floor, climb over barbed wire, then go on the run for more than a week — all in an attempt to avoid accountability for his crimes, which would have landed him behind bars for most of his life.

On Friday, Hurst, now 20, sat before a judge and admitted to all of it. The murders, the robberies, the escape. Everything.

“Guilty,” Hurst repeated a total of 28 times while shackled in 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 charged with killing four people and committing two armed robberies from late 2020 to early 2021. Law enforcement said he was affiliated with the Young Bag Chasers and Young Face Arrangers, two allied West and North Philadelphia gangs responsible for a wave of violence, and was frequently willing to get behind the gun to target their enemies.

First, he shot and killed 20-year-old Dyewou Scruggs, an aspiring comedian and social media influencer. On the morning of Dec. 24, 2020, Hurst followed Scruggs as he walked to catch a 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 shots rang out and the camera panned toward the sky.

Then, on March 11, 2021, Hurst opened fire on a group of young men connected to rival group “0toda4″ on the 1400 block of North 76th Street. He sneaked up on them from a back alleyway before unleashing a barrage of bullets that struck four men, killing two: Naquan Smith, 24, and Tamir Brown, 17.

In the days after, according to video shared in court, Hurst sent one of Brown’s friends a voice message on Instagram, telling him to “pick ya mans up” and mimicking the teen’s last words with a laugh: “I’m hit! I’m hit in my neck!”

He laughed about the crime again in a jail call the following month, video showed, telling a young woman the shooting was “the funnest jawn I ever did.”

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

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

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

Hurst knew it, too. In two separate video calls from jail, Hurst laughed while mimicking how he shot Hargrove.

“I thought that was Sid,” he said, referencing their rival target. “We got the wrong [person] though.”

Hurst was arrested in April 2021 and charged with those slayings and two separate gunpoint robberies in West Philly. And yet, that wasn’t the end of his crimes.

In May 2023, while awaiting trial, Hurst sparked a citywide manhunt when he and another man escaped from the jail. Hurst would go on the run for 10 days, spending much of that time hiding out in New York City, Assistant District Attorney Brett Zakeosian said Friday.

While on the lam, 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 by the outcome of the case, mostly so that the families of Hurst’s many victims don’t have to endure a lengthy trial.

“While we are pleased,” he said, “it’s still difficult to imagine that four young lives were extinguished by somebody who was 16 years old. That’s a tragedy in and of itself.”

And the jail calls in which Hurst laughed about the killings, he said, show ”a level of callousness and remorselessness that is frightening.”

Hurst is the latest in a long line of YBC/YFA members to be convicted of multiple shootings in the last 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 gun possession, and related crimes.

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

Throughout the afternoon, Hurst sat calmly and with little expression, looking away periodically to chew his fingernails. His mother did the same from the courtroom gallery, her hands clasped gently beneath her chin as she watched her son admit to all he had done.

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