WASHINGTON — The man accused of the brutal murders of three members of a D.C. family and their housekeeper appeared in D.C. Superior Court Friday as prosecutors pushed the judge to set a trial date in the case.
Daron Wint, 34, of Lanham, Maryland, stood without expression next to his court-appointed attorney, his hands and feet shackled, as attorneys on both sides argued over when the trial should be scheduled.
Wint is accused of killing 46-year-old Savvas Savopoulos, his 46-year-old wife Amy, their 10-year-old son Philip and the family’s housekeeper, 57-year-old Veralicia Figueroa, in the family’s home in Northwest D.C. in May 2015.
Prosecutors said that DNA evidence found on five items in the case link the defendant directly to the crime scene.
Assistant US Attorneys Emily Miller and Laura Bach told D.C. Superior Court Judge Mario Lopez a case could take four to six weeks and asked him to set a trial date for February 2018.
Wint’s court-appointed attorney, Arthur Ago, said he’d need more time before a date could be set. Ago said the raft of DNA evidence in the case — he told Judge Lopez he stopped counting at 200 samples — would require more time for his office to test. Ago noted that the prosecution had fifteen months to test as many as 500 samples in the case.
Prosecutors argued that the actual number of DNA samples tied to the crime scene was actually much smaller.
Judge Lopez said he wanted to give the defense the time needed to analyze the evidence, and declined to determine a trial date. Instead, he scheduled another status hearing for Feb. 3rd.
The May 2015 murders shocked the community. The four victims were killed in an 18-hour ordeal in which prosecutors say they were held captive.
