A Howard Circuit judge described an Essex man’s actions as “horrific” when she sentenced him to 63 years in prison Thursday for setting ablaze his ex-girlfriend’s house while the woman’s daughter was asleep upstairs with her boyfriend.
Scott Allen Pryor, 45, who was convicted of first-degree arson, first- and second-degree assault, burglary and reckless endangerment, must serve at least half the sentence before he’s eligible for parole, said Judge Diane Leasure.
She said the lengthy sentence, which nearly doubled the maximum 34 years recommended by state guidelines, “was completely proper and just given the chilling facts of the case.”
Pryor entered the Columbia town house of his former girlfriend, Sheryl Alman, in November 2007 and doused the first floor with gasoline before setting it ablaze.
Alman’s daughter, Breanna, 19, and Andrew Lee were sleeping when they awoke to the smell of smoke, prosecutors said.
Lee escaped through a second-floor window, but Breanna collapsed at the bottom of the stairs and suffered burns across 40 percent of her body before Howard firefighters rescued her.
“Never before have I been more aware of how close I came to death,” Breanna wrote in a letter that was read aloud in court Thursday by Prosecutor Brendan Clary.
“… I now know the true sense of the capability of human evil.”
Breanna spent 89 days at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Burn Center in Baltimore and underwent 14 operations to repair the burns with skin grafts.
“Breanna is permanently and irrevocably damaged,” Clary said in court.
“Scott Pryor intended to injure her and he did it in a sadistic, cruel way. … This was an atrocity.”
Pryor did not speak in court, but his attorney, Benjamin Sutley, said Pryor “is remorseful and stands by the fact that he never meant to inflict that kind of pain on Breanna.”
Sutley argued during the trial that Pryor didn’t know anyone was home when he set the fire and only intended to destroy the furniture out of spite.
He said his client was “a ticking time bomb that finally detonated on that day.”
Leasure denied his request to detain Pryor at the Patuxent Institution for treatment of his depression.
After the court hearing, Sutley said the sentence was harsh, “but the facts of the case were admittedly extreme.”
Sheryl Alman declined to comment.
