18-Year Old Pleads Guilty in Conn. Town Hall Fire

An 18-year-old Waterford, Conn. man has pleaded guilty to setting fire to the former Griswold Town Hall building in Jewett City, Conn.

Curt Rivard accepted a plea deal in Superior Court that includes a six-year prison sentence and five years of probation. He’s to be sentenced Oct. 29.

The fire reduced the 100-year-old building in the Jewett City section of town to a smoldering brick skeleton. After the blaze, town officials discovered that an insurance policy on the building expired three months earlier.

Rivard admitted to police in a signed statement he and another suspect used a can of starter fluid as a flame thrower to ignite items inside the vacant School Street building on Jan. 3, 2006.

The case against the other suspect, Nicholas Euell, 20, of Griswold, is pending.