Inset: Maurice Hill (Philadelphia Police). Background: Cops duck for cover after Hill started shooting at them in Philadelphia (KYW).
A Pennsylvania man will spend the rest of his days behind bars after he shot six Philadelphia police officers who were trying to arrest him on a narcotics warrant.
Maurice Hill, 41, was sentenced Thursday to serve between 120 and 240 years after a jury found him guilty in May of a slew of charges, including three counts of attempted murder and nine counts each of aggravated assault and assault on a law enforcement officer.
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Hill fired more than 100 rounds at officers, who were pinned down and unable to escape to safety.
“I was being shot at and thought I was going to die,” an officer testified, according to local Fox affiliate WTXF.
Luckily, those officers shot all survived their injuries and were discharged from the hospital not long after arrival.
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, who caught heat from the President Donald Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for the district, said the sentence “concludes one of the worst moments in the history of Philadelphia criminal justice.”
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“Maurice Hill’s relentless barrage of bullets terrified an entire community and nearly took the lives of multiple people, including police and neighborhood residents. We are glad that justice was served in this case and that there was no loss of life,” he said in a statement.
The cops were trying to serve a warrant for his arrest in August 2019 when he opened fire. He barricaded himself in the home for hours before eventually surrendering. Hill claimed he was shooting in self-defense.
“We were arguing what was in his head at the time, and what he knew at the time. We weren’t debating he fired. We were debating why he fired,” said defense attorney Ellis Palividas, according to local ABC affiliate WPVI.
