A man who fired more than 100 rounds at Philadelphia police officers sentenced to 120 to 240 years in prison

A man who fired more than 100 rounds at Philadelphia police officers — striking six of them — during an hours-long standoff in North Philadelphia was sentenced Thursday to 120 to 240 years in prison, bringing a close to what law enforcement officials called one of the darkest chapters in the department’s recent history.

Maurice Hill, 42, had just returned to his home near North 15th Street and Erie Avenue on the afternoon of Aug. 14, 2019, when a police narcotics unit, searching for drugs, executed a search warrant on a nearby residence.

When officers saw a man drag a bag from that property to the rowhouse where Hill lived, they shifted course and attempted to enter Hill’s front door — first by knocking and announcing themselves, prosecutors said, then using a battering ram.

Chaos followed when Hill grabbed an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and fired at the officers through the drywall separating his kitchen from the living room, prosecutors said, launching a nearly eight-hour standoff that left one officer shot in the head, others struck in their arms and legs, and a residential city block with a daycare center under siege as officers exchanged gunfire with Hill, who surrendered around midnight.

Hill was convicted in May on three counts of attempted murder, nine counts of aggravated assault, eight counts of aggravated assault on law enforcement, two gun-related charges, and one count of causing catastrophe. A jury acquitted him of 19 related charges.

The nearly two-week trial presented a jury in Common Pleas Court Judge Diana L. Anhalt’s courtroom with a carousel of emotion as a procession of officers injured that day offered tearful testimony and recounted the frantic moments of rapid gunfire in the dark, cramped, smoke-filled rowhouse.

Two months later, as Hill sat for his sentencing, some of those officers returned to the stand. Among them was Shaun Parker, the first police officer to enter Hill’s home — and the man struck in the head by a bullet Hill fired from the AR-15.

“A day hasn’t gone by that I haven’t relived this moment,” Parker, an 11-year veteran of the force, told the court. “It was the worst few minutes of my life, and now my children are old enough to ask questions. That makes it harder, because I have to explain to them, trying to keep them from the truth — that a centimeter is the difference between me being here today.”

Assistant District Attorney Anthony Voci frequently evoked the plight of officers like Parker when making his case that Hill was a career criminal who had flouted the law for most of his life.

Asking Anhalt for a sentence that would be measured in centuries, Voci, the case’s lead prosecutor, rattled off crimes Hill had been accused of committing from age 15 on, and reminded the judge that Hill had been barred from possessing a firearm — let alone the five guns police recovered from the property alongside large bags of marijuana, ammunition, and more than $11,000 in cash.

“That morning officers woke up, safe, secure, physically and emotionally, not knowing their lives were going to turn that day,” Voci said. “Hill woke up with five guns he was not allowed to have — loaded, ready to go.”

Meanwhile, defense attorney Pantellis Palividas said Hill feared for his life during the encounter and had acted in self-defense. The officers, he said, had not properly announced themselves when entering the home and Hill believed he was the victim of a home invasion and did not realize he was shooting at police when firing through the wall.

“[Hill] did not wake up intending to do what happened in this case,” Palividas told Anhalt during Thursday’s hearing. “He didn’t wake up at all — he was at the hospital, where his baby daughter was just born. He went to that house where he was living in the back room to shower, buy clothing, and to return to the hospital. That was what Mr. Hill was doing that day, because he is not just his acts. There is more to a person.”

Hill, speaking shortly before the judge delivered his sentence, apologized to the officers involved, as well as to traumatized residents of the block and the city at large.

“It was never my intention to kill, hurt, or harm anyone,” he said. “And by the grace of God, there were no fatalities. And we are all here to still be mothers and fathers to our kids.”

Hill said he understood the trauma experienced by the injured officers because he, too, has been shot in the past. Since the 2019 standoff, he said, he has suffered PTSD, sleep disturbances, and mental health issues and was seeking treatment through medication.

Hill’s mother, Tomasina Hill, spoke in her son’s defense. “He’s not a monster, he’s not a killer,” she said. “… He didn’t have that state of mind. This became a situation that happened, and it just escalated.”

Hill’s son, Maurice Hill Jr., took the stand to lament that his father will have to raise his young daughter from jail.

“I got a chance to spend time with him,” he said of his father. “My little sister will never get to spend that time.”

Before handing Hill what amounts to a life sentence, Anhalt expressed shock at the dissonance between Hill’s violent actions and his professed family values.

“I just don’t understand how someone who has that kind of love in their life, how they have that kind of support, can, as you say, ‘snap’ in an instant,” Anhalt said, referring to Hill’s earlier description of the standoff. “If you’re willing to risk that love and support, you’re willing to risk anything.”

More frankly, “the time to have considered your family was on Aug. 14, 2019, at four in the afternoon,” Anhalt added. “Not today.”

Palividas had asked that Hill’s sentences be served concurrently, and that Hill be housed in a facility near Philadelphia to be close to his family.

But Anhalt ordered that the sentences of 20 to 40 years in prison, tied to multiple counts of attempted murder, be served back to back. Additional sentences for the lesser charges, which carry penalties of five to 10 years and one to two years, respectively, will be served concurrently, she added.

“The part where it says you didn’t wake up intending to shoot people that day, I believe that, I truly do,” Anhalt said, addressing Hill’s statement. “The part we need to take a step further, though, is that you were ready to.”

.

District Attorney Larry Krasner said the sentencing “concludes one of the worst moments in the history of Philadelphia criminal justice.”

And Roosevelt Poplar, president of the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, lauded the long prison sentence, saying the sentence would “keep this individual locked up for life.” He also commended the officers who “ran toward danger back in 2019 to arrest a violent felon” and said they deserve a “debt of gratitude.”