Kevin Bui, right, agreed to serve 60 years behind bars for setting fire to a Denver home that killed five family members on Aug. 5, 2020. (Denver Prosecutor’s Office)
The third person accused of killing five family members in Colorado — including two children – by intentionally setting their house on fire because they mistakenly believed that an iPhone stolen from one of them was in the home, will be spending several decades behind bars for the heinous crime.
Kevin Bui, 20, appeared in court on Friday and formally pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder in the horrific 2020 slayings of Djibril “Jibby” Diol, his 23-year-old wife Adja, and their 21-month-old daughter, Khadija, along with Diol’s sister Hassan and her 6-month-old daughter, Hawa Beye, authorities announced.
Bui’s legal team reached a deal with prosecutors in the Denver District Attorney’s Office in which he agreed to serve a sentence of 60 years in a state correctional facility in exchange for the state dropping an additional 60 criminal charges he had been facing.
Bui was 16 years old at the time he and two others — Gavin Seymour and Dillon Siebert — lit the fatal blaze while the five victims and three others were inside of the home located in the 5300 block of North Truckee Street in Green Valley Ranch. The three individuals who survived the fire all leapt from a window on the second floor of the home.
Authorities said that Bui was the individual whose phone was stolen and was widely considered to be the ringleader of the group. Police said he used the “Find My iPhone” app to track the location of his stolen device to the general area of family’s home without getting an exact location.
The three were said to have spent weeks planning the fire as revenge for Bui’s stolen cellphone. They went to a costume store and bought hockey-style masks before breaking into the back door of the home armed with containers of full of gasoline. They doused the walls with the accelerant and then set the home ablaze before fleeing the scene on foot. The home quickly became fully engulfed in flames.
Police said they were able to place Bui, Seymour, and Siebert at the scene through cell phone location data. The three were also captured on surveillance footage at a local store purchasing masks they wore during the commission of the crime, which was also filmed by a neighbor’s doorbell camera, authorities said.
Kevin Bui, Gavin Seymour, and Dillon Siebert just before setting the deadly blaze (Denver DA’s Office)
Police arrested the trio in January 2021, initially charging them with dozens of felonies including first-degree murder and arson.
Seymour, who was also 16 at the time, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder earlier this year and was subsequently sentenced to 40 years behind bars. Siebert, who was only 14 years old, similarly pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was ordered to serve three years in a juvenile detention center plus an additional seven years in state prison.
According to a report from The Associated Press, Bui did not say much during Friday’s proceedings, giving only terse responses to direct questions from Judge Karen Brody.
None of the victims family members attended the proceedings, as they reportedly chose to view the hearing online via a livestream.
Bui is scheduled to appear in court before Judge Brody again on June 2, to be formally sentenced.
David Harris contributed to this report.
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