Between working days at Amazon to earn money she could send to her family in Senegal — she worked opposite her sister-in-law so she could take care of the other’s children — Hassan Diol would call several times a day to talk to her husband.
Mr. Amadou was still at Senegaltrying to get a visa so that he too can come to the UNITED STATES. His wife, joined by their young daughter, also made video calls every day. Amadou Beye was eager to meet his child and see his wife again. But he never got that chance.
Diol and their baby daughter, Hawa, along with three other members of their extended family were killed in the fire from a Denver home in 2020 that authorities say was set off in the middle of the night by a group of teenagers as part of a wrong revenge.
The last of the three suspects could be sentenced to 60 years in prison at a hearing Tuesday after pleading guilty to reduced charges as part of a plea deal.
Beye considers Kevin Bui, now 20, to be a “terrorist” for kidnapping five members of the same family, which also included his wife’s brother, Djibril Diol, who was 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.
At the time of his death, Djibril Diol was working on the reconstruction of Interstate 70 in Denver and dreamed of returning to Senegal to build roads there, according to testimonies from friends and family members.
Beye, who was granted an emergency visa after the fire, works as a mover and tries to avoid being alone at night to avoid thinking about what he has lost. With his roommate working nights as an Uber driver, he goes to the gym or calls family and friends late at night when he gets home.
“I don’t want to think about that when I’m alone”said Mr. Beye, who plans to speak at Mr. Bui’s sentencing hearing.
Prosecutors have portrayed Bui as the leader of the group that started the fire. The son of Vietnamese immigrants, he was helping his older sister, Tanya Bui, deliver drug that she was reselling at the time of the Aug. 5, 2020, fire, according to federal court documents. The sister’s business was discovered accidentally when police searched the family home in suburban Denver as part of the fire investigation, and she is currently serving a nearly 11-year federal prison sentence.
After being arrested in connection with the fire, Bui told investigators that his phone, money and shoes were stolen while he was trying to buy a gun, according to testimony from the lead detective on the case, Neil Baker. Using an app to track his phone, Bui said he learned it was in the home and believed the people who robbed him lived there, though he did not research the home’s residents, Baker said during an evidentiary hearing in the case in 2021.
Bui admitted to starting the fire and realized the next day through media coverage that the victims were not the ones who burglarized him, Baker said. Investigators never said where Bui’s phone was.
In May, after unsuccessfully trying to challenge key evidence in the case, Bui pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder. Sixty other counts, including first-degree murder, attempted murderarson and burglarywere 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 will either have to reach another agreement or go to trial.
Relatives largely support the deal, not because they see it as true justice, but because they see it as the best way to resolve the criminal case nearly four years after the fire.
Mr. Beye, who is Muslim, said he hoped God would one day bring justice. But after nearly four years, relatives left behind are tired and want the remaining criminal cases resolved.
“We just want to move on because we’re going to have to live with this for the rest of our lives.”Mr. 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 youth prison. In March, Gavin Seymour, 19, was sentenced to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to one count of second-degree murder.
Surveillance video showed three suspects wearing full face masks and dark hoodies outside the house just before the fire started, but the investigation dragged on for months with no further leads. Fearing the fire was a hate crimesome Senegalese immigrants have installed security cameras in their homes, in case they are also targeted.
Police didn’t believe the house, nestled among many similar ones on a street in a dense subdivision, had been chosen at random. They tried a new and controversial strategy: asking Google to reveal which IP addresses had searched for the home’s address in the 15 days before the fire. Five of them 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 Google’s search of users’ keyword histories, an approach that critics called “digital flirting” that threatens to undermine privacy and constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. The Court clarified that it was not making a “general proclamation” on the constitutionality of such search warrants and insisted that it was ruling on the facts of this case alone.
