Arsonist Gets 60 Years for 2020 Denver House Fire that Killed Five
The Denver Post
(TNS)
More than a dozen members of Colorado’s Senegalese community listened in silence inside a Denver courtroom Tuesday morning, waiting for their final chance to be heard as nearly four years of police investigation and court proceedings finally came to a close.
They bowed their heads, closed their eyes and gripped each other’s hands as the final arsonist responsible for a horrific Green Valley Ranch house fire that killed five people faced sentencing. A handful more who tuned in from western Africa sat in a digital waiting room or on speakerphone.
“Kevin Bui, this is all I have left of Djibril,” family friend Lamine Kane said, holding up a pair of white and blue sneakers at the podium. “You destroyed a whole community. … Did you know right from wrong that night? When you bought the masks? When you planned the trip?”
After 1,427 days, Kevin Bui — the last of three teen arsonists who soaked the inside of a Truckee Street home with gas and ignited the blaze that killed three Senegalese adults and two children — was sentenced to 60 years in prison by Denver District Court Judge Karen Brody.
“The sentencing of Kevin Bui marks the end of one of the darkest chapters in Denver’s history,” Deputy District Attorney Courtney Johnston said during the hearing. “This was no accident. This was not impulsive, it was not careless, it was not reckless. It was by design. It was the goal to burn the house down and kill everyone in it.”
Johnston said it was fitting to end the legal chapter of this case with Bui’s sentencing, given that his plan caused it all to happen in the early morning hours of Aug. 5, 2020.
Djibril Diol, 29, his wife, Adja Diol, 23, and their daughter, Khadija Diol, 1, died in the house fire, along with Djibril’s sister, Hassan Diol, 25, and her 6-month-old daughter, Hawa Baye.
Bui, now 20, and two other then-teens — Gavin Seymour and Dillon Siebert — planned the fire for weeks. They set the house ablaze because Bui mistakenly believed someone who had stolen his phone lived there and he wanted revenge, according to court testimony.
A security camera captured a ghostly image of the three teens wearing masks and hoodies near the site of the fire.
“As homicide detectives, we see death every day and usually learn to live with it,” said Neil Baker, a Denver police detective. “This is one of the cases in my 33 years of law enforcement that I’ll take with me forever. This is by far one of the most senseless murders we’ve ever investigated.”
Kane, a friend of the Diol’s for more than a decade, said he’s been acting as an interpreter throughout the court cases, talking for the family and filling them in on the courtroom details. He said the years of hearings have not allowed members of the Senegalese community to mourn, forcing them to revolve their lives around the courtroom.
“I will never get out of my mind how Djibril’s mom hugged me and just screamed,” he said, remembering his visit to the Diol’s Senegal home after the family’s death.
Speaking through Kane over the phone from Senegal, Djibril and Hassan’s father — Hanady Diol — said the fire still feels like yesterday, even as the fourth anniversary approaches.
“Since this has happened, I am a dead person that isn’t buried yet,” Hanady Diol told the court.
Bui pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder in March, a plea agreement that saw prosecutors drop 60 other charges, including multiple counts of first-degree murder, assault, burglary and arson. The agreement also dismissed a second, separate case in which the then-18-year-old was accused of bringing drugs into jail.
Brody sentenced Bui to 30 years in prison and a mandatory five-year parole for each count of second-degree murder during Tuesday’s hearing, a length the defense and prosecution agreed on and stipulated in the plea agreement. The 20-year-old could have faced as many as 48 years in prison on each count.
“This is an incomprehensible and senseless tragedy,” Brody said. “The loss of innocent lives is horrific.”
Although his parents sat on the hard benches of the Denver courthouse when Bui plead guilty in March, the duo watched the sentencing hearing online Tuesday, listening with the help of a Vietnamese interpreter.
“I imagined what I would say so many times, but I still can’t piece together any words that fully describe the pain,” Bui said in a statement to the court. “No matter what I do, no matter how much time it takes for lives to resume or for the media to forget these people, the scars will still be there.”
Bui took full responsibility for the arson and deaths Tuesday.
“It is not Dillon’s fault and it is not Gavin’s fault,” he said to the court. “Regardless of who did what, I take full responsibility. At the end of the day, my words and actions don’t take that pain away.”
Alongside Baker, 10 members of the Colorado Senegalese community gave statements to the court for the prosecution, asking Brody to ignore the plea deal and deliver the maximum sentence.
“I will never forget or forgive you for what you did to me,” said Amahdu Beye, whose 1-year-old daughter died in the flames.
Brody had to ask Beye multiple times to look at her and away from Bui when delivering his statement.
“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to say what I need to say without looking at him,” Beye said, turning back to Bui. “You killed five people, took me away from my wife, took me away from my baby that I will never have a chance to see again. If I were you, I would kill myself.”
Wearing a T-shirt reading “#justicefordiolfamily,” Ousman Ba — another family friend — also took to the stand.
“I will never call my best friend again,” he said. “I will never be able to stay up late just talking about life goals, life plans. And the thing that hurts the most for me is I can’t stop thinking about it.”
Ba said Djibril Diol asked him years ago if Denver was the right place and that Ba, who has lived in Denver since he was 6 years old, told him to come.
“After that horrific day, I didn’t know if this was my home anymore,” Ba said. “Our community was hurt and I lost the trust I had in this city.”
In March, Brody sentenced 19-year-old Seymour to 40 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder — the maximum possible sentence he faced.
Siebert was 14 at the time of the crime and prosecuted as a juvenile. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 2022 and was sentenced to three years in juvenile detention followed by seven years in prison.
The cases against Bui and Seymour stalled for several months after the pair challenged the legality of the search warrant Denver police used to identify them — through Google search results — as suspects in the fire. The Colorado Supreme Court upheld the search warrant in October.
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