Victims Have Their Day At Sentencing Warehouse Arsonist Given 35-Year Prison Sentence

It was the victims’ day in court Monday as Martin S. Pang got a 35-year prison term for torching his parents’ frozen-foods warehouse, causing the death of four firefighters.

The daughter of one victim said Pang should be burned at the stake. Other relatives said he deserved life without parole. One said she could forgive him only because of her religious faith and urged him to seek repentance.

King County Superior Court Judge Larry A. Jordan accepted the plea agreement after a 1-1/2-hour hearing in which parents, children, wives and colleagues of the dead firefighters described their anguish and anger at Pang, 42, who avoided a murder charge by fleeing to Brazil.

All said they hoped they could now begin laying to rest the rage they have felt since Jan. 5, 1995, when fire gutted the Mary Pang Food Products Inc. processing plant and warehouse three blocks east of the Kingdome.

Firefighters Randall R. Terlicker, 35, Gregory M. Shoemaker, 43, Lt. Walter D. Kilgore, 45, and James T. Brown, 25, died when they fell through a weakened floor and into a burning basement they didn’t know was there.

Prosecutors said Pang, an aspiring movie and television actor at the time, hoped to collect insurance on the business to support an extravagant lifestyle. His adoptive parents, Harry and Mary Pang, who had written the judge to ask for a lesser sentence, sat silently and left quickly after the proceedings.

“He is guilty of greed. Greed is the worst of selfish sins, and it kills,” said David Churchill, a firefighter who was blown out of the building when the floor collapsed.

“Martin Pang, you wrecked my heart for me that awful night,” said Karen Shoemaker.

“I don’t think I can ever forgive you,” she said. “I think you should be locked up for as long as you put away my husband. He’s never coming back … 35 years is not long enough.”

One of the Shoemakers’ two daughters, Amy, 23, a produce sales representative in Richland, was more vehement.

“He should have been sentenced to die, preferably by being tied to a stake and set afire. Only then could he know how my father died,” she said.

“Quite frankly, I wish him nothing but misery and pain,” said Heidi McBride, Terlicker’s fiancee at the time of the fire.

“Now I will never know what the future might have been. We might have had kids by now,” McBride said. “I can’t stand it that he’s become a piece of the past. It isn’t right.”