By ERIC TUCKER
The Associated Press
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A star-struck fan of Great White since the 1980s, Michael Hoogasian had called his sister hours before his death, saying he had been personally invited by the leader of the group to their Rhode Island concert.
She told him to tell her all about it in the morning.
“I’m still waiting for his call,” Paula McLaughlin said Monday, one of 21 relatives of victims from the 2003 night club fire to testify at a sentencing hearing for the band’s tour manager. Hoogasian, 31, and wife, Sandy, 27, were burned beyond recognition in the blaze, among 100 people who died.
“Do you know what it’s like to have two people you love so much to die in such a horrific manner that they can only be identified by dental records?” McLaughlin asked.
The three-day hearing for Daniel Biechele was to resume Tuesday, giving more parents, siblings and other relatives of those killed in The Station nightclub fire a chance to testify about their grief.
Biechele, 29, lit the pyrotechnics that triggered the Feb. 20, 2003, fire at the West Warwick nightclub. He pleaded guilty in February to 100 counts of involuntary manslaughter and, under a plea deal, will be sentenced Wednesday to serve no more than 10 years in prison.
On the hearing’s first day, relatives recalled turning on the television the night of the fire and seeing the building engulfed in flames; some described the pain of burying a child, others lamented bright futures that will never be fulfilled.
William C. Bonardi lamented that he will never have grandchildren and his family name had been snuffed out with the death of his only child, 36-year-old William.
“We will never ever obtain the so-called closure,” Bonardi said. “The pain and suffering that we endure will continue for as long as we live. Because in losing our only child, we lost our best creation and our future.”
Andrea Silva said she would never forget her grandfather’s face — or his scream — when he learned his youngest son, her uncle Thomas Medeiros, 40, had been killed in the fire.
“Three years later, the same look of sadness is still etched on his face,” Silva said.
On the night of the fire, as Great White launched into its first song, Biechele ignited four small pyrotechnic devices that each sprayed 15-foot-long streams of sparks. The sparks quickly ignited flammable foam used as soundproofing around the stage and engulfed the building.
More than 200 others were injured in the fourth-deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history, and the worst fire in state history.
The owners of the nightclub, brothers Jeffrey and Michael Derderian, are accused of installing the flammable foam that fed the flames. They have pleaded not guilty to 200 counts of involuntary manslaughter _ two counts for each person killed, under separate legal theories. Michael Derderian’s trial is tentatively scheduled July 31; his brother’s hasn’t been set.
Diane Mattera said Monday that her husband, Raymond, was warned at the funeral home not to open the body bag containing their daughter’s remains because she had been so badly burned. He asked which end was her head and then kissed it through the black plastic.
Their daughter, 29-year-old Tammy Mattera-Housa, was inseparable from her older sister, Michelle Hoell, and they even had their first sons five weeks apart, the mother said.
“When Michelle’s son Kyle lost his first tooth, her first reaction was to pick up the phone and call Tammy, but there’s no number,” Mattera said. “Phones don’t ring in heaven.”