A Waukegan man who agreed to help a friend set fire to a video store was sentenced Thursday to 4 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to arson.
Daniel Fell, 25, of the 2300 block of Washington Street, appeared before Lake County Circuit Judge John Phillips and pleaded guilty to his role in the April 1997 arson that destroyed The People’s Choice video store, 1811 Grand Ave., Waukegan.
“You have a lot to be thankful for–that nobody was in that building,” Phillips told Fell. “What a sad state of affairs, where you get mad at somebody and burn down their business.”
According to Assistant State’s Atty. Laura Horner, Jeffrey Zudonyi, 26, of Kenosha, became angry at one of the two video store owners for personal reasons, and he and Fell agreed to burn down the store.
Horner said Zudonyi poured gasoline into the video return slot as Fell kept an eye out for witnesses. Fell was to have lit the match, Horner said, but changed his mind at the last minute, so Zudonyi threw a match inside.
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Fell, who previously has been convicted of theft and possession of a stolen automobile title, fled on a bicycle, Horner said. Both men were arrested in November 2000 after a police detective saw Zudonyi in a police lockup and remembered he had been a suspect in the unsolved arson.
Zudonyi pleaded guilty to an arson charge last month and received a 4-year prison term, Horner said.