The leader of a teenage gang who cremated two babies and three adults after attacking the wrong Colorado house in revenge for a stolen iPhone will serve 60 years in prison.
Lawyers for Kevin Bui, 20, accepted a plea deal after he admitted to setting fire to the Denver home where eight innocent people were sleeping one night in August 2020.
Bui and two accomplices broke into the Green Valley Ranch home and doused the walls with gasoline before setting it on fire and leaving the family to fend for themselves.
Three people jumped to safety from a second-story window, but the bodies of Djibril Diol, his wife Adja, 23, their 21-month-old daughter, Khadija, along with Diol’s sister, Hassan, and their six-year-old daughter months, Hawa. , were found huddled next to the front door.
“It’s not the closure I imagined, but I guess it’s the best we could get,” said family friend Ousman Ba.
Kevin Bui accepted a 60-year sentence for his role as the 16-year-old leader of a teenage gang who burned down the wrong house in revenge for a stolen iPhone.
Djibril Diol, his wife Adja, 23, their 21-month-old daughter, Khadija, along with Diol’s sister, Hassan, and their six-month-old daughter, Hawa, were killed in the fire.
The police who approached the house were repelled by the intensity of the heat.
Bui and his friends Gavin Seymour, 16, and Dillon Siebert, 14, had spent weeks planning the attack on the house.
Bui had misidentified him after using the ‘Find My iPhone’ app to trace the location of his stolen device to the family’s neighborhood.
They bought hockey-style masks at a costume store and were recorded on ghostly surveillance footage approaching the house laden with gasoline cans the night of the fire.
Denver Police Officer Gordon King was among the first to arrive on the scene and heard someone trying to open the front door from the inside with a keypad.
“Officer King kicked in the front door, but the extreme heat forced him away,” the arrest warrant for Seymour records.
‘Officer King could see a small human body measuring approximately three feet inside the front door.
“When Officer King attempted to remove the person, it was evident that the person was not alive and the extreme heat of the fire forced Officer King to back away.”
Investigators had little to go on until they ordered Google to turn over information on anyone who had searched the Truckee Street address online in the two weeks before the fire.
Bui’s father, Thuan Bui, was in court to see the settlement announced and told reporters: “We accept it.”
The killers were captured on chilling surveillance footage approaching the house, wearing hockey masks and armed with gasoline cans.
Little remains of Green Valley home after gas inferno
Among those killed in the fire were Hassan Diol’s brother Djibril (right), his wife Adja Diol (left) and their 22-month-old daughter Khadija.
They were then able to locate Bui, Seymour and Siebert at the scene via cell phone location data.
Prosecutors said the three tried to cover their tracks and searched online for information about the fire and about the prison sentence for murder.
The trio was arrested in January 2021 and charged with crimes including first-degree murder with extreme indifference, attempted murder with extreme indifference, robbery, and assault with a deadly weapon.
Siebert was sentenced in February 2023 to ten years in prison for his role in the crime.
Seymour pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in March and was sentenced to 40 years in prison, followed by five years of mandatory probation.
Bui’s legal team announced a deal with the Denver District Attorney’s Office on Friday in which he agreed to 60 years in a state correctional facility in exchange for the district attorney dropping 60 additional criminal charges.
Bui’s father, Thuan Bui, was in court to see the settlement announced and told reporters: “We accept it.”
The murdered family was originally from Senegal and Diol had graduated in 2018 in civil engineering from Colorado State University.
Diol worked for Kiewit construction and his family stayed with friends at the house until they could get a house of their own.
The killings horrified the city’s tight-knit Senegalese community and prompted condolences from the country’s president.
Relatives watched online from Senegal as Seymour was sentenced in March, and Amadou Beye, who lost his wife Hassan and six-month-old Hawa, addressed him personally in court.
“I hope that when you die, you die slowly and hard,” he told her.
And you will die young. And when you die, I hope you feel all the pain that they felt when they were dying. And you will feel all the pain we feel right now.’
Seymour apologized in court, saying: “If I could go back and avoid all of this, I would.”
‘Not a moment goes by where I don’t feel extreme guilt and remorse for my actions. …I want to express how sorry I am to the family and the community for all the damage I have caused.’
Seymour apologized for his role in the murders when he was sentenced to 40 years in March.
Djibril’s brother shook his head when details of the murder were revealed at a Denver police news conference following the arrests in January 2021.
The killings shocked the city’s tight-knit Senegalese community and prompted condolences from the country’s president.
But Hanady Diol, who lost her son Djibril and daughter Hassan, said she had thought about suicide after their deaths.
‘This person here, he’s talking about 40 or 30 years. That simply means there is no justice there. The people who died cannot be judged to be human beings.
‘I am helpless. “I’m not uneducated, but you should know that the people you killed couldn’t even kill a fly,” she said.
‘The people you killed were my hope and my life. Know that you didn’t just kill five people.
‘Me and your mother; We breathe, but we are dead.’
Bui will return to court for formal sentencing on July 2.