'Akil The Fugitive Hunter' Is A Man Of Mystery

The reality TV genre has seen its fair share of crime fighters — there are the police officers who are featured on Cops, Dog The Bounty Hunter, and the women of Bounty Girls: Miami. However, I can guarantee you’ve never seen anything like Akil The Fugitive Hunter, a new A&E series that combines live-action documentary footage, animation by Black Dynamite: The Animated Series creator Carl Jones, narration by Wood Harris, and music by executive producer Ty Dolla $ign. But who is Akil Muhammad, the show’s titular star?

Here’s how Muhammad is described in a bio on the A&E website:

"Growing up in the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles, Akil Muhammad saw thugs and gangsters committing crimes with impunity. On the verge of entering into the criminal world himself, he chose to take a different path after losing his best friend to gang violence and vowed to do everything in his power to rid his neighborhood of those doing harm. Today, Akil has become one of the most successful bounty hunters in California, yet he remains true to his original mission: fighting to keep his community safe from gangsters, murderers, rapists and those who seek to hurt innocent people."

Judging from the trailer that A&E also put out, it seems like a lot of Muhammad’s job involves running around in the dark and arresting people, which makes sense, for a bounty hunter.

Of course, the world of bounty hunting (or bail enforcement, as it’s sometimes called) isn’t always so exciting. Bail recovery agents are licensed investigators tasked with capturing fugitives who skip out on paying a bail bondsman or refuse to show up for court. According to the San Diego Reader, in California you cannot be a bail recovery agent if you have a felony on your record, meaning that if Muhammad really left the "gang life" to clean up the streets of Los Angeles, it's very probable that he never personally had trouble with the law.

Other than that, however, Muhammad seems like a bit of a mystery, which is probably a requirement. If your job is tracking down criminals, you don’t want to be the sort of person who a fugitive can easily Google and know to avoid — until that reality show comes knocking, I guess. At least you can now follow the show at @AkilTheHunter on both Twitter and Instagram — although it’s mostly just promotional images and retweets of people who are excited to see what the show has in store, not any tweets from the man himself. Except for this one, maybe?

I suppose that if you truly want to know more about Muhammad and what kind of person he is, there’s really only one thing to do: watch Akil The Fugitive Hunter when it premieres on July 13.