Former GREAT WHITE Tour Manager Seeks Community Service

The Associated Press has issued the following report:

A former rock band tour manager being sentenced next week for his role in a nightclub fire that killed 100 people asked a judge to show mercy Thursday by imposing community service rather than sending him to prison.

Daniel Biechele, 29, the former tour manager for the band GREAT WHITE, will be sentenced next week to serve up to 10 years in prison for igniting the pyrotechnics that sparked the deadly 2003 fire at The Station nightclub in West Warwick. He pleaded guilty in February to 100 counts of involuntary manslaughter that accused him of igniting the pyrotechnics without the required permit.

In a sentencing memorandum filed Thursday afternoon, lawyers for Biechele say he never intended to harm anyone and could not have known about the flammable foam on the club's walls that helped fuel the flames.

Though the attorney general's office is seeking the maximum prison term possible under the plea deal, Biechele's lawyers ask for mercy and leniency in their memo, saying their client will "better serve the memory of these victims by performing community service and working as a productive citizen than by sitting in a prison cell."

The memo says letters written on Biechele's behalf by roughly 80 friends and family show a "decent, compassionate person." It says Biechele loves children, cares for stray animals, grabbed a hose to try to help put out the Feb. 20, 2003, fire at The Station and immediately began cooperating with investigators.

Biechele now works for a flooring company and takes accounting classes at night, according to the memo, which also says he married his high school sweetheart within the last month.

Sparks from the pyrotechnics ignited flammable sound-absorption foam placed near the stage. More than 200 people were injured in the fire, the fourth-deadliest nightclub blaze in U.S. history. Eight people who died lived or worked in Connecticut.

While he admitted lighting the explosives, according to the memo, "he did not know, and could not know, that the club itself was a chemical bomb that the foam lining the walls was flammable, and that the building was dangerously overcrowded when the GREAT WHITE concert began."

The memo says Biechele is the only person who has accepted responsibility for the fire. The brothers who owned the club, Jeffrey and Michael Derderian, each face 200 counts of involuntary manslaughter and are accused of installing the foam.