Former GREAT WHITE Tour Manager Faces Victims of Rhode Island Fire

May 8, 2006

Eric Tucker of The Associated Press has issued the following report:

Watching her severely burned daughter go through 35 operations over two months before doctors took the young woman off life support was "a journey of hell," Anna Gruttaduaria told the court Monday as a sentencing hearing began for a man she holds responsible.

Her 33-year-old daughter had gone to The Station nightclub in West Warwick for a heavy metal concert on Feb. 20, 2003. GREAT WHITE had just started its first set when tour manager Daniel Biechele [photo] set off a pyrotechnics display that sparked the state's deadliest fire. Pamela Gruttadauria was its 100th victim.

"How can you decide whether to keep your daughter alive or not?" Ann Gruttadauria asked in court. "We knew she would not have a good life. She was totally destroyed."

Biechele, 29, pleaded guilty in February to 100 counts of involuntary manslaughter and faces up to 10 years in prison. Before the judge sentences him, though, Biechele is hearing from the victims' relatives.

Some sobbed and reached for the boxes of tissue that were placed throughout the courtroom Monday as parents spoke about the holes that had been left in their lives.

Eileen DiBonaventura spoke about her 18-year-old son, Albert Anthony DiBonaventura. She described the agony of waiting to hear what had happened to him and how she felt when she learned he was among the dead.

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