Rock band manager jailed for deadly club fire

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island - A rock band tour manager who set off fireworks inside a Rhode Island nightclub and started a blaze that killed 100 people was sentenced today to 15 years in prison but 11 years were immediately suspended.

People gasped in the courtroom when Judge Francis Darigan sentenced Daniel Biechele, 29, who set off the pyrotechnics when the heavy metal band Great White played at The Station nightclub in nearby West Warwick on February 20, 2003.

Biechele had pleaded guilty in February to 100 counts of involuntary manslaughter. In addition to the prison sentence, the judge sentenced him to three years of probation.

"How do you feel now?" Patricia Belanger, who lost her daughter in the blaze, shouted to Biechele's sobbing mother as her son was handcuffed and led away.

Calling the judge's ruling "a joke," Belanger said, "She will get her son back in four years, and they'll go back to being a happy family. What will we have? Nothing."

Sparks from the fireworks ignited the club's soundproofing foam and many patrons, overcome by toxic fumes, were trapped at the door as the wooden roadside club burned to the ground.

Two hundred people were injured.

Before hearing his punishment, Biechele wept uncontrollably as he apologized over and over to the court for his role in the blaze, the fourth deadliest nightclub fire in US history.

"I know I will never forgive myself for what happened that night," said Biechele, who wrote personal letters to each victim's survivors over the last months.

Biechele is the first person to be sentenced for the fire. His lawyers asked for community service while prosecutors asked for a 10 year prison term under the plea deal. The brothers who owned the club are awaiting trial on manslaughter charges.

Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch said he thought Biechele should pay a higher price for 100 lives lost in America's smallest state where many of the 1 million residents knew someone who died.

"But you can see how the judge struggled to reach the decision," Lynch said after the judge noted that Biechele, who recently married and was taking accounting classes at night, had no criminal history and showed true remorse for his crime.

The sentence came after two days of heart wrenching testimony from relatives who described their shattered lives. Many said they can no longer work and take medication. Some said they considered killing themselves.

And one sister said she called her dead brother's and sister-in-law's cell phone again and again only to hear their voices one more time. 

- REUTERS