Maurice Hill, 36, is the suspected shooter in Philadelphia yesterday and he shot six police officers. Thankfully, no one was killed. However, there are more details coming out about Hill and is disturbing that he was able to obtain a gun even with his record.
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The Philadelphia Inquirer reports Hill adult criminal justice system starts in 2001. At the age of 18, he was arrested with a gun that had an altered serial number. The outlet also reports, “Public records show that he has been arrested about a dozen times since turning 18, and convicted six times on charges that involved illegal possession of guns, drug dealing, and aggravated assault. He has been in and out of prison; the longest sentence handed him came in 2010, when a federal judge gave him a 55-month term.”
When he was incarcerated in 2008, he escaped. He was convicted of escaping, fleeing from police, and resisting arrest. Also in 2008, was in federal prison of pleading guilty to “federal firearms violations after he was caught with a Smith & Wesson .357 and later a Taurus PT .45 semiautomatic.” Yet, he was still able to get those weapons even with prior felony convictions.
Others charges include being convicted of perjury in 2013 and sentenced to seven years of probation. In 2014 he was driving an unregistered scooter and when police went after him Hill “crashed the scooter and then fled on foot but was apprehended. He was charged with driving without a license, recklessly endangering another person, and fleeing police, but later was acquitted on all counts,” according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Twitter named Maurice Hill Jawn Wick, which is from the Keanu Reeves movie “John Wick.” Hill was also live-streaming the shooting on Facebook. In a now deleted Facebook page, Heavy.com reports he went by the name Maurice Hill-Gruff and he wrote that he attended John Bartram High School, which is located in Southwest Philadelphia.
According to Hill’s lawyer, Shaka Johnson, Hill has a girlfriend, a babygirl that was born just 2 days ago, and a teenage son. Johnson was speaking to him on the phone during the shooting, trying to calm him down and he eventually surrendered. They spoke after the shooting and Johnson explained, “I didn’t ask any questions about what happened, what took place, I’m not a psychiatrist; I’m not interested in that. All I wanted to do was to speak to him from one man to another man, from a father to a father, and someone who appreciates my opinion.”
You can read Hill’s full criminal history, here.
According to statistics, the Nicetown neighborhood is more than 90 percent Black.
It’s been a violent summer in Philadelphia, where multiple people were shot over the weekend in the city’s Southwest section. One weekend in June saw 19 shootings and 28 victims with five people dying as a result. Prior to Wednesday’s shooting, the Philly Voice reported that there had been at least six mass shootings in the city in 2019.
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