PLEA DEAL REACHED IN SETON HALL FIRE.

[Jacqueline]

http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061115/NEWS/61115018

[LouiseVargas]

(in my best Borak from Khazakhstan voice)

WHAAAAT???

Two guys who set fire to a dorm as a prank and killed three students are being let off the hook. Charges dropped?

[Jacqueline]

(in my best Borak from Khazakhstan voice)

WHAAAAT???

Two guys who set fire to a dorm as a prank and killed three students are being let off the hook. Charges dropped?

Yes Louise.  After almost 7 years of adamantly denying any wrong doing, right before the trial they plead guilty to a lesser charge.

It was a prank, that went wrong...

All of these years were pure hell for the victims families and the surviving injured have gone thru hell.

i believe their sentence could be as little as 15 months with max 5 years.

[LouiseVargas]

Sorry to hear the scales of justice in this case were not in balance.

[Jacqueline]

Three die, two skate
 
Two drunken rowdies who set a paper banner on fire in their Seton Hall University dorm - sparking a raging inferno that killed three students and injured dozens - pleaded guilty yesterday to reduced charges that will land them in prison for no more than five years. They got away with murder.
It is a bitter pill that Joseph LaPore and Sean Ryan will escape severe punishment for the deaths of Aaron Karol and Frank Caltabilota, who became disoriented by smoke and wandered into the flames, and John Giunta, who was overcome in the doorway of his room.

Prosecutors gave deals to LaPore and Ryan rather than go to a jury with a circumstantial case. After denying all for six years, LaPore and Ryan took the plea rather than risk a conviction and 30 years in prison. They admitted, finally, to "a prank that got out of hand."

To call what happened a "prank" is an abomination. LaPore and Ryan drunkenly played with fire in a crowded residence hall at 4:30 a.m. on Jan. 19, 2000, and the catastrophic results were all too foreseeable. Young lives were lost and survivors suffered horribly, some of them irreparably. And worse than an abomination was an attempt by LaPore's lawyer William DeMarco to excuse his client by blaming the school for not providing enough fire protection in the dorm.

LaPore and Ryan killed three people, spent six years denying it and got their cronies to swear to the lies. They could be freed in as little as 16 months. They beat the system.

[San]

One of the attorneys had the nerve to blame Seton Hall saying something like they weren't equipped for the fire.

The prosecutor was so mad she said they had six years and that's all they could come up with.  She said they should be ashamed of themselves.

One of the victims fathers has nothing but praise for the prosecutor.

[Jacqueline]

One of the attorneys had the nerve to blame Seton Hall saying something like they weren't equipped for the fire.

The prosecutor was so mad she said they had six years and that's all they could come up with.  She said they should be ashamed of themselves.

One of the victims fathers has nothing but praise for the prosecutor.

If these two boys owned up to it in the beginning, everyone would have been better off, including them.

The Star Ledger had a special ongoing story on this and it was obvious there was a lot of cover up on part of the the defendants, their family and friends etc....

They also ran a special section on some of the survivors and what they had to go thru and still go thru due to their injuries would just make you cry.

This does not seem as if justice has been served.

[JerseyMom]

Disgusting.  Pure hell for these families and the survivors and NOW they admit it?  And 5 years???
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.angelfire.com/nj2/hghomepage/images/gone.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.angelfire.com/nj2/hghomepage/secretpage.html&h=427&w=389&sz=22&hl=en&start=20&tbnid=FXcyPkx39pqehM:&tbnh=126&tbnw=115&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dseton%2Bhall%2Bfire%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN

[JerseyMom]

For all the Monkeys with children at college:
http://www.montclair.edu/pages/ehs/FireSafety/open_letter.htm
OPEN LETTER FROM A SETON HALL FIRE SURVIVOR

[JerseyMom]

Heartbreaking video.  Dana was severely burned.  
Dana Christmas was an RA at the Seton Hall fire in 2000 that killed three freshmen. This is her story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzpxaUCOccY&mode=related&search=