PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A man who committed four murders as a teenager and escaped from jail last year was sentenced to state prison on Thursday for as long as 110 years. He’ll be up for parole in 55 years.
Ameen Hurst was just 16 when he committed the first of the four murders he was sentenced for on Thursday.
“This was a string of crimes that began on Christmas Eve in 2020, during the pandemic, and it extended into the spring of 2021, into the month of March,” said Assistant District Attorney Anthony Voci, standing with other Philadelphia law enforcement leaders at the District Attorney’s Office.
Early on March 18, 2021, Hurst gunned down 20-year-old Rodney Hargrove, in a case of mistaken identity, less than an hour after Hargrove was released from Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility. It was Hurst’s fourth murder in as many months.
“This is a sentencing that involved nine different criminal cases: four of them homicides, two of them attempted murders, two of them robberies, one of them a fairly infamous escape,” said District Attorney Larry Krasner.
On the evening of May 7, 2023, it took Hurst and fellow Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center inmate Nasir Grant about 90 seconds to open their cell doors, stroll down a hallway, crawl through a door into the prison yard, and slip through a 7-week-old hole in the fence.
Hurst led authorities on a 10-day manhunt before U.S. Marshals apprehended him in West Philly.
“He showed no regard for the value of human life when he was out on the street,” Voci said. “He showed no regard for the law while he was in prison.”
Hurst, now 19, will spend 55 to 110 years in state prison — which will have a big effect on the Hargrove’s family.
“Thanksgiving is right around the corner. Family is all we have,” said one of Hargrove’s cousins. “And now I just hope and pray we can have a better Thanksgiving knowing justice was served.”