Colorado man sentenced to 60 years in prison for arson that killed Senegalese family of five

Hamady Diol, the father of Djibril and Hassan Diol, spoke by telephone from Senegal during the verdict hearing about his need for sleeping pills after the loss of five family members.

“I am a dead man who is not yet buried,” he said in Pulaar through a translator.

The bodies of the victims 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.

Bui, wearing a green prison uniform with his hands shackled by a chain around his waist, said he was an “ignorant fool” at the time of the fire. He said he could not imagine what it would be like to have family members taken away from him and gave the names of all the victims.

But he rejected the idea that he was a monster or a terrorist, as some victims called him, saying instead: “My heart beats just like yours.”

“I have no excuses and no one to blame but myself,” he said.

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

Hassan Diol’s husband, Amadou Beye, was still in Senegal waiting for permission to join his wife and meet his little daughter for the first time when the fire broke out. After the fire, he received an emergency visa, works as a furniture mover and tries not to be alone in the evenings so as not to think about what he has lost. 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,” Beye said before the trial.

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’ search histories. Critics have called the approach a digital dragnet that threatens to undermine people’s privacy and their constitutional protections against unjustified searches and seizures. The court warned that it was not a “comprehensive statement” on the constitutionality of such search warrants, but emphasized that it was only ruling on the facts of this one case.