DENVER (AP) — A Colorado man pleaded guilty Friday to murder charges for starting a 2020 house fire that killed five members of a Senegalese family in misguided revenge for a stolen iPhone he mistakenly dropped at the home.
Kevin Bui, now 20, was an adolescent on the time of the hearth but was prosecuted as an adult. He was portrayed by prosecutors because the leader of three friends who set the hearth in a Denver neighborhood in the midst of the night on August 5, 2020. Bui mistakenly believed the individuals who recently robbed him lived at the house after using an app to locate his stolen iPhone within the local area, previous testimony within the case shows.
Bui pleaded guilty to 2 counts of second-degree murder. An agreement between the defendant and prosecutors calls for a jail sentence of as much as 60 years – 30 years for every count. The maximum penalty for every count of second-degree murder is 48 years and a $1 million fantastic.
Judge Karen Brody set sentencing for July 2.
Bui sat on the table together with his lawyers in the course of the hearing, his hands cuffed in front of his body and he was wearing a green prison uniform.
He gave perfunctory answers to the judge's questions as his parents watched from the court gallery and listened to the proceedings, which were broadcast through headphones by an interpreter. Bui's father told reporters after the hearing that that they had accepted the plea agreement.
Bui is the last of the three friends to enter a plea in the hearth that killed Djibril Diol, 29, and Adja Diol, 23, in addition to their 22-month-old daughter Khadija Diol. Her relative, Hassan Diol, 25, and her six-month-old daughter, Hawa Beye, were also killed. Three other people escaped by jumping from the second floor of the home, breaking some bones.
There were no relatives of the victims in court, but they followed the proceedings online, said Ousman Ba, program coordinator for the African Leadership Group and spokesman for the family of Djibril Diol and Adja Diol. He also consults with Amadou Beye, whose wife and daughter were killed.
The families supported the deal although that they had originally hoped Bui could be sentenced to life in prison without the potential of parole, Ba said. It is the harshest sentence handed down in Colorado for the reason that abolition of the death penalty and is the automated penalty for a first-degree murder conviction. However, because individuals who committed crimes as juveniles are treated in a different way and are eligible for parole, the families believed this plea agreement was the very best choice to resolve this case after nearly 4 years, he said.
“We are Muslims. We believe that Allah, our Creator, will ensure justice,” Ba said, thanking prosecutors for informing the families concerning the case.
One of the second murder cases that Bui pleaded guilty to was the killing of Dijibril and Adja Diol and their child. The other reason is the killing of Hassan Diol and her baby. Sixty other charges against Bui, including first-degree murder, attempted murder, arson and burglary, were dropped by prosecutors as a part of the plea deal.
Last yr, Dillon Siebert, who was 14 on the time of the hearth, was sentenced to 3 years in juvenile detention and 7 years in a state prison program for young inmates. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder under a deal that prosecutors and defense said balanced his lesser role in planning the hearth, his remorse and interest in rehabilitation with the horror of the crime.
In March, 19-year-old Gavin Seymour was sentenced to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder.
The investigation into the reason behind the hearth dragged on for months without yielding any clues. Surveillance video showed three suspects wearing full face masks and dark hoodies. Fears that the hearth was a hate crime prompted many Senegalese immigrants to put in security cameras of their homes to forestall them, too, from being targeted.
Without further motion, police eventually obtained a search warrant and asked Google which IP addresses had searched the house's address inside 15 days of the hearth. Five of the IP addresses found were based in Colorado, and police obtained the names of those individuals through one other search warrant. After investigating these individuals, police eventually identified Bui, Seymour and Siebert as suspects. They were arrested about five months after the hearth.
In October, the Colorado Supreme Court upheld searches of Google users' keyword histories, an approach that critics have called a digital addiction that threatens to undermine people's privacy and their constitutional protections from unreasonable searches and seizures.
However, the court cautioned against making a “general statement” on the constitutionality of such arrest warrants, emphasizing that it was only making a choice based on the facts of this case.
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