D’Aundrey Scott

Introduction

D’Aundrey Scott, 32, of Washington, D.C., was sentenced on October 23, 2026 to 25 years in prison for a late-night arson spree in Northeast Washington in May 2020 in which he set two sleeping men on fire, killing 62-year-old Darryl Finney. Scott pleaded guilty on August 14, 2026 — more than six years after the attacks — to one count of second-degree murder and one count each of assault with a dangerous weapon, arson, and felony destruction of property, before D.C. Superior Court Judge Todd Edelman, who imposed the 25-year term plus five years of supervised release. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro announced the sentence with language that framed the case’s cruelty: “D’Aundrey Scott deliberately set two men on fire in the middle of the night, killing Darryl Finney in an act of horrific violence… His actions were cruel, calculated, and utterly unconscionable.”

Background Information

The attacks happened in the early hours of May 13, 2020, during the first spring of the pandemic, against men sleeping outdoors on H Street Northeast — a fact pattern that made the case, when it reached its resolution in 2026, one of the District’s most stark prosecutions of violence against homeless residents. Darryl Finney was 62 years old. Scott was arrested on May 19, 2020, six days after the spree, and had been in custody ever since — meaning the six-year gap between arrest and plea was a period of pretrial detention, and the man sentenced this week before Judge Edelman had already spent a large fraction of his twenties and early thirties locked up awaiting the outcome. The case number, 2020 CF1 004775, sits in D.C. Superior Court, where the prosecution was handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Ganjei.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Convicted and sentenced. Scott pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, assault with a dangerous weapon, arson and felony destruction of property on August 14, 2026, and was sentenced to 25 years in prison on October 23, 2026.

According to court documents summarized at sentencing, Scott went on the arson spree beginning at approximately 12:23 a.m. on May 13, 2020. He first approached an adult male lying on the sidewalk in the 1300 block of H Street Northeast, ignited a small flammable object, and threw the burning object onto the man, who kicked it off and avoided injury. Roughly forty minutes later, at approximately 1:04 a.m., Scott approached a second man — Darryl Finney, sleeping on the sidewalk in the 900 block of H Street Northeast — ignited a small flammable object and tossed it onto him, then splashed an ignitable liquid onto Finney, causing Finney and his personal effects to catch fire. Finney, engulfed in flames, managed to get up and walk toward H Street, where Metropolitan Police and D.C. Fire and EMS responded. He suffered second- and third-degree burns to multiple parts of his body and, despite hospital treatment, died of his injuries on May 15, 2020 — two days after the attack. The plea resolved all counts from the spree: the murder of Finney, the arson that killed him, the assault on the first man he set alight, and the destruction of property from the burning.

Public Reaction and Consequences

At sentencing, Pirro and Interim Metropolitan Police Chief Jeffery Carroll jointly announced the outcome and commended the MPD investigators who worked the case, alongside prosecutor Ganjei. The 25-year term, imposed by Judge Edelman to be followed by five years of supervised release, represents the resolution of a case that sat unresolved in the Superior Court docket from 2020 until Scott’s plea this summer — a delay visible in the numbers themselves, since a defendant arrested at an age in the mid-twenties was sentenced at 32. The government’s announcement does not record a statement from Scott or his defense, and no mitigation appears in the release; the factual account stands as the court accepted it by plea.

Current Status

Scott, 32, is serving a 25-year prison sentence imposed October 23, 2026, to be followed by five years of supervised release; his guilty plea to all four counts is final. He has been in continuous custody since his May 19, 2020 arrest, and credit for that pretrial detention applies against the term. Under District of Columbia sentencing structures, a second-degree murder sentence of this length carries parole-eligibility review before the full term is served, but the recorded judgment — plea, 25 years, five years supervised release — is the operative fact of his status.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Scott was in his mid-twenties when he set the fires and will be past fifty under the sentencing structure before supervised release begins, a span that forecloses any ordinary working life in the interval. For the man he set alight first, the record records a narrow escape — a burning object kicked away in time — and for Darryl Finney’s family, the plea in August and the sentence this week closed a case that had waited more than six years for an admission of responsibility. The case’s public meaning, as the U.S. Attorney chose to state it, is about the victims: two men asleep on a city sidewalk in the middle of the night, one of whom survived by reflex and one of whom did not.

Sources

• U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Columbia, “Deadly Arson Spree in Northeast Yields 25 Years in Prison for D.C. Man,” October 23, 2026 — source