Isn't this what you tried?
"I've tried various ways, like having another invisible object that follows the player and switching the scroll to that one when the player is destroyed, tried using instance variables, nothing worked..."
You don't have to switch the scrollto.Keep the scroll to to the invisible sprite.Before the the player is destroyed,Set global variable Playerx and Global variabel Player y to the corresponding Player.X and Player.Y.
Then unpin the invisible object.Set it's x and y to global variable.(I think you can also use instance variables)
Wait x seconds and do whatever you want.