Last year, when Ameen Hurst was imprisoned and accused of committing four murders, he was willing to crawl on the prison floor, climb barbed wire, then flee for more than a week – all of it in order to avoid accountability. for his crimes, which would land him behind bars for most of his life.

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

“Guilty,” Hurst repeated 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 charged with murdering four people and committing two armed robberies between late 2020 and early 2021. Law enforcement said that he was affiliated with the Young Bag Chasers and the Young Face Arrangers, both allies. West and North Philadelphia gangs responsible for wave of violenceand was often willing to get behind the weapon 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 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 the shots rang out and the camera panned skyward.

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

In the days that followed, according to video shared in court, Hurst sent a voice message to one of Brown’s friends on Instagram, telling him to “come get you,” and imitating the teen’s last words by laughing: “I’m touched!” I’m hit in the neck!

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

A week after killing Brown and Smith, Hurst and his YBC associates received a tip that one of their longtime 39th Street rivals was about to be released from prison, the assistant district attorney said Anthony Voci. On the night of March 18, 2021, he and his team drove to the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility and spotted a young man waiting outside the prison gates. Thinking 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 mistakenly killed 20-year-old Rodney Hargrove – which had nothing to do with their quarrel.

“This 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 prison, Hurst laughed as he imitated the way he shot Hargrove.

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

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

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

While he was on the loose, Zakeosian said, Hurst even rented a recording studio with his brother in Manhattan and recorded a new rap song that he has since posted online.

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

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

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

Hurst is the latest a long line of YBC/YFA members to be sentenced of several shootings over the past year. In total, 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 firearms, as well as related crimes.

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

Throughout the afternoon, Hurst sat calmly and with little expression, periodically looking away to bite his nails. His mother did the same from the courtroom gallery, her hands clasped gently under her chin as she watched her son admit 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.