The third person charged with deliberately setting their Colorado home on fire to kill five family members, including two children, because they thought an iPhone that had been stolen from one of them was inside will likely spend decades in prison for the horrific act.
In the horrifying 2020 killings of Djibril “Jibby” Diol, his 23-year-old wife Adja, and their 21-month-old daughter Khadija, as well as Diol’s sister Hassan and her 6-month-old daughter Hawa Beye, authorities said that Kevin Bui, 20, entered a formal plea of guilty to two counts of second-degree murder on Friday in court.
Bui’s legal team worked out a deal with the Denver District Attorney’s Office prosecutors wherein the state dropped 60 further criminal counts against him in exchange for Bui serving a 60-year term in a state penitentiary prison.
When Bui and two other people, Gavin Seymour and Dillon Siebert, started the deadly fire, the five victims and three other people were inside the house in the 5300 block of North Truckee Street in Green Valley Ranch.
Bui was sixteen years old at the time. The three people that made it out of the fire all jumped out of the second-story window of the house.
Bui, who was reportedly the group’s leader and whose phone was taken, was identified by the authorities. Authorities claim that he tracked his stolen device’s location using the “Find My iPhone” app to the approximate vicinity of the family’s house, but he was unable to determine its precise location.
The three allegedly planned the fire for weeks in retaliation for Bui’s cellphone theft. Before crashing through the back door of the house with gasoline-filled containers in their hands, they went to a costume store and purchased hockey-style masks.
They lit the house on fire, drenched the walls with accelerant, and then made their way off foot. The house was soon completely enveloped in flames.
Using mobile phone location data, the police claimed to have located Bui, Seymour, and Siebert at the site. Authorities added that the three were also seen on surveillance footage at a nearby business buying masks they would later wear in the crime, which was also recorded by a neighbor’s doorbell camera.
The three were taken into custody by police in January 2021, and they were originally accused of numerous charges, including first-degree murder and arson.
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Earlier this year, Seymour—who was 16 at the time—pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was later given a 40-year prison sentence.
Similar to this, Siebert, then just 14 years old, entered a plea of guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to three years in a juvenile detention facility plus an extra seven in state prison.
The family members of the victims apparently decided to watch the hearing online via a webcast, therefore none of them attended the proceedings.
On June 2, Bui is expected to appear in court once more before Judge Brody to receive a formal punishment.
