The leader and the tour manager for the band Great White, whose pyrotechnics sparked the deadly 2003 blaze in The Station nightclub told the police they had permission from the West Warwick nightclub to use the pyrotechnics.
Jeffrey Derderian, one of the two brothers who co-owned the club, however, wrote in a three-page witness statement to the West Warwick police that neither he nor his brother, Michael, granted such permission to Great White.
Those conflicting statements are part of the massive release of material related to The Station nightclub fire by the Attorney General’s Office this morning. The material -- including the nearly unprecedented release of 4,878 pages of grand jury testimony, 609 witness statements totaling 5,207 pages and seven videos -- provides new insight about what happened before, during and after the February 2003 fire that killed 100 people and injured more than 200.
Much of the information has never before been made public since the three defendants who were indicted after the fire -- the Derderians and band tour manager Daniel Biechele -- all pled to the charges against them before any trial began.
The state’s chief medical examiner at the time of the fire told grand jurors what would have killed those trapped in the burning building. Video shows the chaos of the fire. The owner of the company that sold the highly flammable polyurethane foam to The Station, which the Derderians used as soundproofing material, told the grand jury he doubted the product the Derderians bought came with a safety sheet explaining the hazards associated with the foam.
The release of the material follows a public records' request by The Providence Journal, The Associated Press and the Boston Globe. The material is associated with the criminal investigation into one of the state’s deadliest fires and one of the worst nightclub fires in the country’s history.
Jeffrey Derderian, one of the two brothers who co-owned the club, however, wrote in a three-page witness statement to the West Warwick police that neither he nor his brother, Michael, granted such permission to Great White.
Those conflicting statements are part of the massive release of material related to The Station nightclub fire by the Attorney General’s Office this morning. The material -- including the nearly unprecedented release of 4,878 pages of grand jury testimony, 609 witness statements totaling 5,207 pages and seven videos -- provides new insight about what happened before, during and after the February 2003 fire that killed 100 people and injured more than 200.
Much of the information has never before been made public since the three defendants who were indicted after the fire -- the Derderians and band tour manager Daniel Biechele -- all pled to the charges against them before any trial began.
The state’s chief medical examiner at the time of the fire told grand jurors what would have killed those trapped in the burning building. Video shows the chaos of the fire. The owner of the company that sold the highly flammable polyurethane foam to The Station, which the Derderians used as soundproofing material, told the grand jury he doubted the product the Derderians bought came with a safety sheet explaining the hazards associated with the foam.
The release of the material follows a public records' request by The Providence Journal, The Associated Press and the Boston Globe. The material is associated with the criminal investigation into one of the state’s deadliest fires and one of the worst nightclub fires in the country’s history.