A Virginia man who pleaded guilty to setting a city councilman on fire and severely injuring him last year has been sentenced to 40 years in prison on charges that include attempted murder, a prosecutor said on Friday.
The man, Shotsie Buck-Hayes, of Danville, Va., was arrested in July after he doused J. Lee Vogler, a Danville city councilman, with gasoline and set him on fire, resulting in burns on 50 to 60 percent of Mr. Vogler’s body.
Mr. Buck-Hayes, 30, was charged with attempted murder, malicious wounding and breaking and entering, court documents show.
He pleaded guilty to the attempted murder and malicious wounding charges in April.
Mr. Vogler, 39, scars visible on his neck and hands, spoke during the sentencing on Thursday, saying that he and his family had been “robbed of a life where I could be the father they deserve — a father with full functionality.”
Local television broadcasts from inside the courtroom showed Mr. Hayes saying on the stand, “If there was something I could do to undo it, I would.” News stations quoted him as saying in court that, at the time of the attack, he had been doing everything he could to save his marriage after he caught his wife having an affair with Mr. Vogler.
After the attack, the police said their preliminary investigation found that the two men know each other and that “the attack stems from a personal matter not related to the victim’s position on Danville City Council or any other political affiliation.”
During Thursday’s hearing, Circuit Judge James Reynolds suspended all but 35 years of a life sentence for the malicious wounding charge and suspended five years of a 10-year sentence on the attempted murder charge, Michael Newman, the commonwealth’s attorney for Danville, said in an interview on Friday.
The breaking and entering charge was dropped after the guilty plea, he said.
Lawyers for Mr. Hayes, Matthew L. Pack and Edward Lavado, did not respond to requests for comment on Friday. Mr. Newman said he did not know whether they planned to appeal the sentence.
On July 30, 2025, Mr. Hayes poured a flammable liquid on Mr. Vogler during a confrontation at the office of Showcase Magazine in Danville, where Mr. Vogler works as director of sales. Mr. Vogler ran out of the building, and Mr. Hayes set Mr. Vogler on fire outside, the police said.
Andrew Brooks, the publisher of the magazine, said in an interview after the attack that bystanders had used their phones to record Mr. Vogler after he was set on fire. A woman who was driving by told Mr. Vogler to drop to the ground and roll, and then she poured water on him, likely saving his life, Mr. Brooks said.
Mr. Vogler could not be reached on Friday at his city office or the magazine. Mr. Brooks could not be reached at the office on Friday.
Mr. Vogler has been a councilman in Danville, a city of about 42,000 on the North Carolina border, about 50 miles northwest of Raleigh, since May 2012.
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