"Did You Steal My iPhone?"... Man Sets Wrong House on Fire, Causing Family Deaths

American man in his 20s uses lost iPhone tracking app
Goes to wrong house and commits retaliatory arson, killing 5 family members
Sentenced to 60 years in prison by US court

A man in his 20s in the United States was sentenced to prison for setting a retaliatory fire at the wrong house while attempting to track his stolen iPhone, resulting in the deaths of five family members. On the 2nd (local time), AP News and others reported that a Colorado court sentenced 20-year-old Kevin Bui to 60 years in prison on charges including first-degree murder and arson.

The photo is unrelated to specific expressions in the article. [Image source=Pixabay]

Bui, the son of Vietnamese immigrants, set fire to a house in Denver, Colorado, on August 5, 2020. As a result, five family members inside the house died: 25-year-old Senegalese immigrant woman Hassan Dior, her 2-year-old daughter, Dior’s 29-year-old brother and his wife, and the couple’s 22-month-old daughter. Bui admitted to the crime after being arrested as a suspect in the case.

According to police investigations, after his iPhone, money, and shoes were stolen, he used a phone tracking app and, believing the phone was at the house, set fire to it. However, the day after committing the crime, he learned that those who died in the fire were not the group who had stolen his iPhone.

A house in Denver, Colorado, USA, damaged by arson in 2020. [Image source=AP Yonhap News]

The police did not disclose the actual location of his iPhone. Amadou Beye, a bereaved family member who lost his wife and daughter in the incident, said, "I hope that one day God will deliver justice." At the time of the incident, Beye was waiting in Senegal for a visa to immigrate to the United States and eagerly anticipating reuniting with his family. After the incident, he came to the U.S. and is now working at a moving company.

Dylan Seibert, who was 14 years old at the time and participated in the crime with Bui, was sentenced last year to three years in juvenile detention and seven years in a state prison youth incarceration program. Another accomplice, Gavin Seymour, received a 40-year prison sentence after pleading guilty.

Shortly after the incident, police identified three suspects from surveillance footage around the victim’s house, but it took months to determine their identities because they were wearing masks. They eventually identified the three suspects by tracking the IP address used to search the house’s address on Google.

During this process, the police requested Google to provide keyword search history information, which sparked backlash from some groups who argued it was an invasion of personal privacy.