PEORIA, Ill. -- A week before Bradley University soccer players were to report for the Fall 2007 season, midfielder Danny Dahlquist's family attended Mass at St. Mark's Catholic Church near the school. The church was the foundation of their family, and as Danny's mother, Tricia, left that Sunday morning, a woman approached her.

"She walked up to me and started shaking my hand, saying what a beautiful family we had," Tricia said. "I thought, 'Well, thank you.' As she was leaving, I realized she had slipped money in my hand. Apparently she had won it somewhere and felt the need to share, spread the wealth so to speak, and she said, 'Bring your family out to dinner.'"

The Dahlquists went home and called Danny, who was living in a house with teammates near campus. He joined his parents and six brothers and sisters at Corky's Ribs & BBQ. Danny quickly ate and, because he was born about a three hours' drive from Wrigley, wanted to watch the Cubs game. He picked up his baby sister, Ellen, and walked back and forth to the area in the restaurant where the game was on TV. Tricia still has that image burned in her mind.

"That's my last vision of him," she said, "standing there with his sister in his hand."

It was the last time the family was together.

COLLEGE PRANK GONE WRONG



It was Saturday, Aug. 11, 2007, and the Bradley soccer friends and teammates living at 2008 West Laura Ave. had decided to throw a party. Danny had moved in for his sophomore year, opting to live off campus instead of in the dorms where he'd lived as a freshman on the team.

Living the life of a Bradley soccer player was a dream for Dahlquist. As he grew up across the street from Bradley, a private school with about 6,000 students, he'd become a devout Braves soccer fan. When he was 10, he met Bradley soccer coach Jim DeRose at a soccer camp. It would be an achievement for a local kid to make Bradley's team. Danny told his parents he'd rather practice for four years at Bradley, a Division I school, than go somewhere else and play for a Division III school. He loved the university where his parents work -- Tricia as an English instructor and Craig as the senior associate athletic director.

Danny's parents, Craig and Tricia, work at Bradley and settled the family in a home near the campus. Courtesy Dahlquist family

But on this night, the teammates and roommates were going to party. They got some alcohol -- later found to be obtained by one of the players, Nick Mentgen, -- and invited some friends. Later that night, the housemates wanted to play a prank on a few of their roommates. According to various reports, Dahlquist and the others had done this before: lighting fireworks, including bottle rockets, Black Cats Fireworks and Roman candles, under one another's bedroom doors. So when Dahlquist and another housemate went to their rooms to go to bed, they were prepared.

"Danny, anticipating that I think from the previous night or two, shoved some towels underneath the door to keep that from happening or to keep the door from being opened or to keep the Roman candles out," said Kevin Lyons, Peoria County's state's attorney.

Based on police interviews, court documents and a report from Lyons, this is what happened:

Dahlquist's roommates -- Bradley soccer players Mentgen, David Crady and Ryan Johnson and a fourth friend, Daniel Cox -- lit Roman candles and shoved them under Dahlquist's bedroom door on the second floor of the house. Each was involved in the incident through obtaining the fireworks, lighting them or placing them under the door. After one didn't go off, likely because the opening under the door was blocked, one of the men used a coat hanger to remove the blockage and at least one more Roman candle was shot under the door.

"The flames were about 1,500 to 1,800 degrees in temperature Fahrenheit," Lyons said. "The flames went across the room. There was a futon across the room and these balls shooting across the floor would hit the wall [and] burst into a bigger flame. The second time when they ran down the stairs and outside, there was no Danny Dahlquist, no nothing."

Dahlquist's bedroom was on fire. After his teammates saw a glow in the second-story window, they went back into the house but couldn't rescue their friend because of the smoke and heat. They woke another roommate, sophomore midfielder Travis English, who was asleep in his own room, and got out of the house. At 4:34 a.m., Gina Goett, a friend invited to the party by Mentgen and Johnson, dialed 911. It was a chaotic scene, with sirens, police, smoke and fire. Johnson fled.

Mentgen was helped up to a secondary roof as he was trying to help get his friend out. In a police interview, an emotional Mentgen described the scene: "I hear Danny, so I know that he is conscious, but he can't see me and I can't see him I just hear him saying he is not making words out I can hear him not yell, but ahhh-ahhh nothing like 'Hey, help!' Nothing like that. I don't think he even knew what was going on."

Firefighters found Dahlquist on the floor near a window in his room. He was rushed to the hospital but pronounced dead at 5:09 a.m. on Sunday, Aug. 12, from "asphyxiation due to smoke inhalation."

PEORIA-BORN AND BRED



Growing up in this blue-collar city of about 100,000 in north-central Illinois, Dahlquist attended Notre Dame High School a few miles from his home. His name is engraved at the school on a plaque celebrating the 2004 Class A state soccer championship.

Dahlquist's former teammate and roommate, Nick Mentgen, right, tried to save Danny from the burning house. Courtesy Bradley University

The 5-foot-9, 145-pound Dahlquist wasn't a superior athlete, but he wanted to play at Bradley so badly that a close friend likened him to the famed Rudy Ruettiger, who inspired the 1993 film "Rudy," about a former Notre Dame football player.

"It was everything to him," his father, Craig, said. "This community gave him an opportunity to not just be friends with those at Notre Dame, and not just be friends with those in the neighborhood, but becoming friends with everybody around this 10- to 15-mile radius. They all came together to play soccer."

Dahlquist enrolled at Bradley in the fall of 2006, made the soccer team as a freshman midfielder and was redshirted. The Braves went 8-8-4 that season, narrowly missing the NCAA tournament in a loss at home to Creighton in the Missouri Valley Conference championship.

The next season, Dahlquist was determined to be an integral part of the team. Teammates and Coach DeRose noticed Dahlquist practicing harder and improving. He'd moved into an off-campus house with Mentgen, Johnson, Crady and English.

Dahlquist was growing up, becoming more independent.

LOSING A SON AND A TEAMMATE



The Dahlquists were just waking up when the call came around 6:45 a.m.

Craig and Tricia Dahlquist had worked up a good speech for their son about underage drinking, but emergency-room personnel immediately took them to a room where one of the nuns at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center told them what happened. They asked if they could see him. She said no. Danny had died.