Philadelphia shooting suspect has a long criminal history
The Philadelphia shooting suspect who fired at cops in a tense, nearly eight-hour-long standoff has a lengthy criminal record that includes gun and drug charges, according to a new report.
Public records obtained by the Philadelphia Inquirer reveal that Maurice Hill, 36, has been arrested at least a dozen times since he turned 18 — and convicted six times on charges including illegal gun possession, drug dealing and aggravated assault.
He’s has done mostly short prison stints for his crimes, the longest a 55-month term issued in 2010, according to the report.
The Wednesday standoff was not the first time Hill tried to evade arrest, the records show. In 2008, he was convicted of escaping, fleeing from police and resisting arrest, the Inquirer reported.
He’s also beaten charges ranging from kidnapping to attempted murder, according to the report.
In 2008, he spent time in federal prison after he was caught with a Smith & Wesson .357 and later a Taurus PT .45 semi-automatic, the paper reported. He pleaded guilty to federal firearms violations — but his prior felony convictions should have barred him from owning those weapons, according to the report.
He was sentenced to four years and seven months in prison.
Hill’s criminal history also includes a 2013 perjury conviction, for which he was sentenced to seven years of probation, records indicate.
He has appeared in court for three different alleged probation violations — at least two connected to new cases, which he later beat, according to the report.
One of those cases occurred in May 2014 when authorities spotted Hill driving an unregistered scooter, according to the report. When officers tried to stop him, he raced down an alleyway against traffic on a one-way street, and then onto a sidewalk — to the dismay of pedestrians, according to court records obtained by the outlet.
He crashed the scooter and ran off, but was soon caught, the records show.
Hill faced charges of driving without a license, reckless endangerment and fleeing police — but was acquitted on all counts, according to the report.
When Hill hunkered down in his home Wednesday — rattling his Nicetown-Tioga neighborhood — Shaka Johnson, the lawyer who most recently represented him, helped convince him to surrender to cops, local outlet CBS 3 reported.
“Maurice called my phone and was like, ‘I’m in a situation, I need your help.’ We talked about you gotta come out, you know?” Johnson told the station. “The first thing I said was, ‘Is there anything I can do for you with respect to contacting anyone?’ The next thing we did was contact the powers [that] be … to see if we can stand down because he’s talking now. Enough people had been hurt for the day and all eyes and quite frankly all barrels at this hour were on Maurice and we wanted to make sure this ended normally.”
Hill surrendered to cops after officers were able to reach him by phone and tossed tear gas into the building.
It was not clear if he was injured in the melee.
No deaths were reported in the shootout.
“Let’s be clear, the police did an awesome job today. They were very patient, this had been going on for hours,” Johnson said of the scene. “[Philadelphia Police] Commissioner [Richard] Ross could have pushed a button long before he did, quite frankly. So I want to give credit to the police for having some sort of patience with all of this … This could have gone very badly earlier in the day.”
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