Kevin Bui gets 60 years in jail for killing Senegalese family in Colorado house fire over stolen iPhone
- ‘We can’t be normal because of you,’ a victim’s relative told Bui, one of the three teens involved in the 2020 attack that killed five people
Kevin Bui, now 20, was the last of three teens charged in the August 5, 2020, fire to be sentenced after pleading guilty to reduced charges in a plea deal. Authorities say Bui, who had recently been robbed while trying to buy a gun, mistakenly thought he had tracked down his stolen iPhone to the home and carefully plotted his retribution. But he neglected to make sure he was targeting the actual thief.
Instead, sleeping inside the home in the middle of the night were members of three immigrant families who were working to support their families back home and had nothing to do with the robbery.
The family that owned the house managed to escape but all the members of two linked families renting from them were killed – Djibril Diol, 29; his 23-year-old wife, Adja Diol; and their 22-month-old daughter, Khadija, as well as Djibril Diol’s sister, Hassan Diol, 25, and her 7-month-old daughter, Hawa.
Hamady Diol, the father of Djibril and Hassan Diol, spoke during the sentencing hearing by phone from Senegal about how he needs pills to sleep after losing five members of his family.
“I’m a dead person that’s not buried yet,” he said in Pulaar through a translator.
