The last Senegalese fire victim to plead guilty in the Denver fire that killed five people could be sentenced to 60 years in prison

DENVER (AP) — Between shifts at Amazon to earn money to send home to her relatives in Senegal — working opposite hours as her sister-in-law so they could take care of each other’s children — Hassan Diol called her husband several times a day to talk to him.

Amadou Beye was still in Senegal, trying to get a visa so he could also come to the United States. His wife and their young daughter also called every day via video call. Amadou Beye couldn’t wait to meet his child and see his wife again.

But he never got that chance.

Diol and her young daughter Hawa, along with three other members of their extended family, were killed in a house fire in Denver in 2020 that authorities said was set in the middle of the night by a group of teenagers in a mistaken act of revenge.

The last of the three suspects could be sentenced to 60 years in prison during a hearing on Tuesday after pleading guilty and having the charges reduced as part of a plea agreement.

Beye considers Kevin Bui, now 20, a “terrorist” because he kidnapped five members of a family, including his wife’s brother, Djibril Diol, an engineer, his wife Adja Diol, and their 22-month-old daughter.

Their bodies were found on the first floor of the house near the front door as they apparently tried to escape the flames. Members of another family who also lived in the house managed to escape.

When he was killed, Djibril Diol was working on a major reconstruction of Interstate 70 in Denver and, according to friends and family, dreamed of returning to Senegal to build roads there.

Beye, who received an emergency visa after the fire, works as a furniture mover and tries not to be alone in the evenings so as not to think about his loss. He goes to the gym with his roommate, who works as an Uber driver at night, or calls family and friends at home late at night.

“I just don’t want to think about it when I’m alone,” said Beye, who plans to speak at Bui’s sentencing.

Prosecutors have portrayed Bui as the leader of the group that set the fire. The son of Vietnamese immigrants, he had helped his older sister, Tanya Bui, deliver drugs that she was dealing around the time of the Aug. 5, 2020, fire, according to federal court documents. The sister’s business was discovered by chance when police raided her family’s suburban Denver home as part of the fire investigation. She is currently serving a nearly 11-year sentence in a federal prison.

After his arrest in connection with the fire, Bui told investigators he was robbed of his phone, money and shoes while trying to buy a gun, according to court testimony from lead investigator on the case, Neil Baker. Using an app to track his phone, Bui said he found out it was in the house and believed the people who robbed him lived there, although he did not research the home’s residents, Baker said at a 2021 evidence hearing in the case.

Bui admitted to setting the fire, but discovered the next day through news coverage that the victims were not the ones who robbed him, Baker said. Investigators never said where Bui’s phone actually was.

In May, Bui pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder after a failed attempt to challenge key evidence in the case. Sixty other charges against Bui, including first-degree murder, attempted murder, arson and burglary, were dropped by prosecutors, who recommended that Bui be sentenced to 60 years in prison.

If Judge Karen L. Brody rejects the proposed deal, both sides would have to either work out another deal or go to trial.

The relatives largely support the deal – not because they believe it represents true justice, but because they believe it is the best way to solve the crime nearly four years after the fire.

Beye, who is Muslim, said he hopes God will one day bring justice. But after nearly four years, the relatives left behind are tired and want the last criminal cases to be solved, he said.

“We just want to move on because we’re going to have to live with this for the rest of our lives,” Beye said.

Last year, Dillon Siebert, who was 14 at the time of the fire, was sentenced to three years in juvenile detention and seven years in a state prison program for young inmates. In March, 19-year-old Gavin Seymour was sentenced to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to first-degree murder.

Surveillance videos showed three suspects wearing face masks and dark hoodies outside the house shortly before the fire broke out. However, the investigation dragged on for months without finding any further clues. Fearing that the fire was a hate crime, some Senegalese immigrants installed surveillance cameras on their homes in case they too could become victims of a fire.

Police did not believe the house, located among many similar houses on a street in a densely populated residential area, was chosen at random. They tried a new and controversial strategy: They asked Google to reveal which IP addresses had searched for the house’s address within 15 days of the fire. Five of those were in Colorado, and police obtained the names of those people through another search warrant, eventually identifying Bui, Seymour and Siebert as suspects.

In October, the Colorado Supreme Court upheld the search of Google users’ keyword histories, an approach critics have called a digital dragnet that threatens to undermine people’s privacy and their constitutional protections against unjustified searches and seizures. The court cautioned that it was not offering a “comprehensive statement” on the constitutionality of such search warrants, and stressed that it was ruling based only on the facts of this one case.