A 20-year-old man who attempted to track his stolen iPhone ended up committing an arson attack on the wrong house, killing a family of five, and has been sentenced to 60 years in prison.
According to AP News, on Tuesday, the Colorado court announced that it had sentenced Kevin Bui, who was charged with first-degree murder and arson, to 60 years in prison.
Dillon Siebert (14 at the time), who was involved in the crime with Bui, was sentenced last year to three years in a juvenile detention center and seven years in a state youth incarceration program. Another accomplice, 19-year-old Gavin Seymour, was sentenced to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty.
On August 5, 2020, Bui set fire to a house in Denver and killed five Senegalese immigrants, including Djibril Diol, 29; Djibril’s wife, Adja, 23; the couple’s 2-year-old daughter, Khadija; Djibril’s sister, Hassan, 25, and Hassan’s 6-month-old daughter, Hawa Beye.
Bui was arrested and confessed to the crime.
He told police, “After my iPhone, money, and shoes were stolen, I used an application to track the phone and set fire to the house where it appeared to be. The next day, after committing the crime, I found out that the people who died in the fire were not the ones who stole the iPhone.”
However, the police did not reveal the actual location of Bui’s iPhone.
Immediately after the incident, police captured the images of the three suspects from surveillance video footage around the victim’s house. However, they wore masks, making it difficult for the police to identify them for several months. The police finally identified the three suspects by tracking the IP address used to search for the house address on Google.
Meanwhile, some groups objected to the police requesting Google to provide search history information, arguing that it was a measure that violated personal privacy.
