A man from Colorado received a 60-year prison sentence on Tuesday for starting a house fire that killed five members of an extended Senegalese family, deeply impacting their loved ones and friends.
A relative of the victims, Amadou Beye, expressed dissatisfaction with the sentence, saying, “That’s not enough. And that will always haunt me… Every time I think about 60 years for someone who killed five people, it brings back the suffering. But since there’s nothing I can do, I’ll just… God will give us justice sooner or later, inshallah. But this is not justice, and I’m not grateful for it. But I will respect it.”
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 reported that Bui, who had been robbed while trying to buy a firearm, mistakenly believed he had found his stolen iPhone at the house and planned revenge meticulously. However, he did not confirm that he was targeting the correct person.
Rachel Lanzen, one of Bui’s attorneys, argued that he did not start the fire, instead implicating the youngest member of the trio facing charges. However, law enforcement officials contradicted this claim, stating that Bui confessed to starting the fire and sustaining burns during the incident.
Bui, identified by prosecutors as the mastermind of the scheme, informed investigators that he had been mugged of his phone, cash, and footwear while attempting to purchase a firearm before opting to set the fire, as per earlier testimony. During that period, he had been assisting his elder sister, Tanya Bui, in distributing narcotics, as per federal court records. The sister’s operation was inadvertently uncovered when law enforcement searched their family’s suburban Denver residence as part of the fire inquiry.
Beth McCann, Denver District Attorney said, “when you have the loss of lives like this in such a callous and premeditated way. It’s a distinct, distinguishable from cases where there’s a passion event or there’s some reason that someone might get engaged in this kind of behavior. That’s one thing. But this is, you know, it was planned. It occurred in the middle of the night when you know, people are asleep, you know people are in that house.”
In May, following an unsuccessful attempt to dispute crucial evidence in the case, Bui pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder. Prosecutors dropped sixty other charges, such as first-degree murder, and suggested a 60-year sentence for Bui. Family members hesitantly backed the agreement, viewing it as the most effective solution to settle the ongoing criminal matter.
“I just want him to suffer for the rest of his life, and if he get a chance to die hard, to do so,” said Beye during an interview.
Last year, Dillon Siebert, who was 14 years old when the fire occurred, received a three-year sentence in juvenile detention and a seven-year sentence in a state prison program for youth. Gavin Seymour, aged 19, was sentenced to 40 years in prison in March after admitting to one count of second-degree murder.
The bodies of the victims were found on the first floor of the home near the front door, having apparently tried to escape the flames while members of another family that also lived in the home managed to escape.
At the time of the fire, Amadou Beye, was in Senegal awaiting a visa to join his wife and meet his baby who was born in the U.S.