A Colorado man sentenced Sentenced to 60 years in prison for setting a house on fire that killed a family of five Senegalese immigrants in a robbery gone wrong.
Kevin Buie, now 20 and the alleged ringleader of the scheme, pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder in a plea deal. Under the deal, prosecutors dropped 60 other charges, including first-degree murder.
Buie told investigators that got robbed He was trying to buy a gun a month before the fire. According to court records, he said he used an app to track down his iPhone to the house. He admitted to setting the fire and said he learned the next day through news reports that the victims were not the people who had robbed him, police said.
The fire was apparently a revenge plot for a stolen mobile phone accidentally entering the house.
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A Colorado man has been sentenced to 60 years in prison for setting a fire that killed five members of a Senegalese family. (Denver District Attorney)
Jibril Diol, 29, his wife Adja Diol, 23, their daughter Khadija, 22-month-old, and Jibril Diol’s sister Hassan Diol, 25, and their 7-month-old daughter Hawa, were all injured. Killed in a fire.
Hamadi Diol, the father of Djibril and Hassan Diol, addressed the court by phone from Senegal through an interpreter. He described how he needed pills to sleep after losing his loved ones.
“I am a dead man who hasn’t been buried yet,” he said, according to the Associated Press.
Hassan’s husband, Amadu Beye, was in Senegal at the time of the fire, trying to get his visa so he could join his family in the United States.
In court, Baye called Bui a “big terrorist” who doesn’t deserve to eat, sleep or talk to his family while he’s in prison. He turned to Bui and told him directly, “Because of you, we can’t live normally.”
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According to the probable cause affidavit, a Denver police officer in the area tried to run into the burning home when he saw a “small human” inside, but was forced to retreat because of the heat. (Denver District Attorney’s Office)
Denver District Attorney Beth McCann said she hoped Bui’s sentencing would bring some relief to family and friends.
“As the ringleader of this deeply disturbing and utterly senseless crime, the sentence Kevin Buie received today was exactly that: the longest sentence of any of the three defendants in the case. Had he not made it, all five would have been sentenced to death. Totally Innocent Victim “He would still be alive today. I hope his sentence brings some measure of relief and a sense of justice to the victims’ families and friends,” McCann said.
Bui addressed the court, saying he was an “ignorant fool” when the fire started. He rejected the idea that he was a monster or a terrorist, saying, “My heart beats just like yours.”
“I have no excuse and I can’t blame anybody else for this except myself,” he said.
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Bui’s attorney said he did not set the fire himself, and blamed it on the youngest of three friends charged in the case. The police disputed this, According to the Associated Press, Bui admitted he started the job on his own and got burned in the process.
Bui is the last defendant to be sentenced in the case.
Gavin Seymour, now 19, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Dillon Siebert, 14 at the time of the fire, was sentenced to three years in juvenile detention and seven years in a state prison program for young inmates.
Investigators stand outside a home where five Senegalese immigrants were found dead after a fire in suburban Denver on August 5, 2020. (AP)
“If I could go back and prevent all of this, I would,” Seymour previously said. “There’s not a moment that goes by that I don’t feel tremendous guilt and remorse for my actions. … I want to say how truly sorry I am to my family members and the community for the harm I caused.”
Surveillance video showed three suspects wearing full face masks and black hoodies outside the home just before the fire started on August 5, 2020.
Police employed a controversial tactic, asking Google which IP addresses had searched for the house within 15 days of the fire. Eventually, they were able to identify Bui, Seymour, and Siebert as suspects.
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In the month of October, The Colorado Supreme Court upheld Searching Google users’ keyword histories, an approach that critics have called a digital dragnet that threatens to undermine people’s privacy and their constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure. The court cautioned that it was not making a “sweeping declaration” on the constitutionality of such search warrants and emphasized that it was ruling on the facts of this one case.
Fox News Digital’s Landon Mien and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
