Man accused of shooting 6 Philly police officers in Tioga standoff testifies at trial: ‘I panicked’

For the last 5½ years, Philadelphia law enforcement officials and prosecutors have been the ones to recount the 2019 shooting of six police officers during an hours-long barricade at a Nicetown-Tioga rowhouse, marking one of the darkest days in modern department history.

But on Tuesday, another individual offered his recollection of those events — the man who prosecutors say fired the barrage of bullets that afternoon, laying siege to a residential block on North 15th Street and leaving the officers — who survived their injuries — with scars both physical and emotional.

By Maurice Hill’s telling of that claustrophobic standoff, the 41-year-old had no clue he was firing at police as he unloaded an AR-15-style rifle through his kitchen wall — a snap decision made after narcotics officers rammed his front door and stormed the property to search for drugs.

And Hill, who surrendered to police after 7½ hours, said he would have turned himself in peacefully hours earlier had he not feared that police would kill him.

“I panicked, I didn’t know what to do,” Hill testified in Common Pleas Court, where he currently stands trial for more than 70 crimes related to the shooting. “I see a shadow of someone coming through my living room with a gun, so I fire through the wall.”

Hill, sporting a pink patterned suit jacket, spoke to the jurors who will decide whether he will spend decades in prison on what was the sixth day of the high-profile proceeding before Judge Diana L. Anhalt.

When the Aug. 14, 2019, shooting made national news, everyone from District Attorney Larry Krasner to President Donald Trump chimed in — and, in Krasner’s case, became intertwined in the saga after offering Hill what the prosecutor later described as a “phony baloney” deal over the phone to help end the barricade.

After days of Krasner’s prosecutors calling narcotics officers to testify, Hill’s defense attorney called witnesses including Hill’s former lawyer; a handful of Hill’s housemates who had become trapped in the cross fire; the mother of Hill’s daughter, who had given birth shortly before the shooting; and finally Hill himself.

Hill told the court that just before the shooting began, he had arrived home after stopping to buy his newborn a set of outfits from Old Navy and getting lunch with a friend; that morning, Hill testified, he had been in the hospital with his daughter and her mother.

As Hill prepared to head back to the hospital, he testified, he heard one of his two dogs, Dior, barking in the front of his first-floor apartment, followed by a “loud boom.” He later learned officers fired upon the animal, killing it.

From the kitchen Hill unleashed the rounds, he said, believing that whoever had entered the home was going to kill him. Prosecutors say one bullet struck Officer Shaun Parker above the ear, leaving the stunned and bleeding man to flee out a window as fellow officers returned fire.

“My adrenaline is up, because I can’t hear nothing,” Hill said of his thinking at the time. “Firing a gun into a small space is real loud. All you see is smoke from the drywall, so I can barely see.”

Hill was adamant that he had no idea it was police who had entered his home; throughout the trial, much of his defense’s arguments centered on whether police were justified in entering the property without a search warrant despite their suspicion of drugs being moved there from a neighboring home, as well as whether officers had announced that they were at Hill’s front door before using a battering ram to enter.

In one of the more surreal moments of the trial — which already included veteran prosecutor Anthony Voci waving the militaristic semiautomatic rifle high above his head while questioning Hill’s housemate about whether he knew that police found firearms, ammunition, and large bags of marijuana inside — Hill testified that he only realized it was police outside the home after seeing helicopter footage on a local news broadcast playing in his bedroom.

Meanwhile, over the next several hours of the barricade, Hill called the mother of his newborn and other members of his family, he testified.

“I’m crying because I know I’m about to die,” said Hill, who said he believed that if he went to the front door to surrender, he would have been shot. “I know at this time I’m not going to see my daughter grow up.”

Hill then made another call — to Shaka Johnson, a well-known Philadelphia defense attorney.

Johnson testified earlier Tuesday that he had spoken with Hill several times over the phone during the barricade, urging him to surrender. While the two men had a professional relationship, Johnson testified, he and Hill had also attended a bar together in Atlanta during the Eagles’ Super Bowl appearance in 2018.

“He sounded scared, he sounded frightened,” Johnson said of Hill’s demeanor over the phone. The attorney later placed a call of his own — to Krasner — to begin the unusual negotiation process. Johnson eventually arrived at the scene to helped coax Hill out of the home with a bullhorn.

Prosecutors are expected to begin questioning Hill on Wednesday.