Kevin Bui, one of three responsible for deadly Denver house fire, sentenced to 60 years in prison
The last of three people responsible for the deadly fire in Denver's Green Valley Ranch neighborhood in 2020 received his jail sentence on Tuesday. A judge handed down 60 years in prison, the maximum possible sentence, to Kevin Bui on Tuesday.
Five Senegalese immigrants died in the fire on Truckee Street. Two of them were young children.
Bui agreed to a plea deal in May. He pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder then and in court on Tuesday he said he takes full responsibility for his actions. Bui planned and calculated the horrific crime, according to detectives, all because of his stolen phone. However, the group targeted the wrong home, killing five members of a Senegalese family – including a two-year-old and six-month-old baby girl.
Djibril Diol, his wife Adja and their 2-year-old daughter were all killed when their home caught fire. Hassan Diol and her infant daughter Hawa Baye were also killed. Three other people were in the home when it was set on fire and they escaped by jumping from windows.
Family members of the victims gave emotional impact statements during Tuesday's sentencing hearing in Denver court. Several said that they haven't been the same since that day in August 2020, and some remain scared for their safety.
"We've been waiting for this day for a very long time. We've been grieving, still grieving, and this is a just a step towards the closure," Ousman Ba said.
Exactly 1,472 days is how long these families have waited for justice. It's how many long, painful days Amadou Beye has lived without his loved ones.
"It killed my wife and my daughter, my brother, sister and niece," Beye said of the fire.
Gavin Seymour was one of the three other people responsible for the fire and was sentenced to 40 years in prison in March after pleading guilty. Dillion Siebert was also given a multi-year sentence last year after a guilty plea (7 years in the Youthful Offender System and 3 years in the Division of Youth Services). All three were all teenagers at the time of the fire. Bui and Seymour were charged as adults and Siebert was charged as a juvenile.
Ba wore a T-shirt with a photo of the victims on it to Tuesday's hearing and said he wished punishments for the arsonists were more severe.
"It's not the closure we wanted, but it's a step closer for all of us, especially going back in these court hearings for the last few years," Ba said. "Finally we just don't have to deal with the suspects anymore and we can really just mourn and talk about the amazing individuals that we lost."
"That's not enough. That will always burn my heart," Beye told reporters after Tuesday's sentencing. "Every time I am going to think about 60 years for someone who killed five people, it's going to make me suffer again."
Authorities said the three arsonists were dressed in masks and hoodies when they committed the crime. They broke into the house, started the fire, and then used gasoline to spread it. The fire destroyed the home.
"Five family members gone... and the trauma of that is impacting not only this community, and across the nation, it's still impacting people to this day," said Ba.
To this day, when a family's killer is sentenced in a system Beye said he cannot trust, leaving him and his family still waiting for justice.
"God will give us justice sooner or later," Beye said. "This is not justice and I'm not grateful for the justice, but I will respect it."
In the statement Bui read in court on Tuesday, he said he's not asking the surviving family members for forgiveness, but he prays that they find some kind of peace and joy in their lives moving forward.
"I was an ignorant knucklehead," Bui said, while shackled behind the podium. "I have no excuses... I do hate that we're here, but life goes on... For everybody else I let down, I'm sorry."
"As the ringleader of this deeply disturbing and utterly senseless crime, Kevin Bui deserved exactly what he received today: the longest sentence of the three defendants in the case," Denver District Attorney Beth McCann said in a prepared statement. "Were it not for his actions, five completely innocent victims would still be alive today. It is my hope that his sentence will bring some measure of comfort and a sense of justice to the victims' families and friends."
