A Colorado teen who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder will spend the next 10 years in prison for his role in setting a Senegalese family’s home on fire after mistakenly targeting it in a revenge scheme over a stolen iPhone.
Amadou Beye was at the courthouse on Feb. 1, still visibly struggling with the loss of his wife and infant daughter, who died in the fire.
“My life doesn’t make sense anymore,” Beye told The Associated Press after the sentencing hearing.
Dillon Siebert, 17, pleaded guilty to his murder charge in December 2022 after accepting a plea deal with prosecutors, The Associated Press reports. Siebert, alongside Kevin Bui, 18, and Gavin Seymour, 18, were all charged in connection to the house fire in a Denver, Colorado suburb. Bui and Seymour’s cases are still pending, and they are facing first-degree murder, attempted murder, arson, and burglary charges.
The fire took the lives of Beye’s wife, Hassan Diol, 25, and their infant daughter, Hawa, as well as Hassan’s brother Djibril Diol, 29, his wife Adja Diol, 23, and their daughter Khadija Diol, 2.
“We can’t be the same anymore, we’re just not normal anymore, they destroyed our lives,” Beye said to the press after the sentencing.
“Being in court isn’t easy, it’s always reminding you how they died. My daughter in the middle of the fire with no help. I can’t feel good, I can’t feel fine,” Beye said.
The deceased were found on the first floor of the home. Two adults and a child living at the house managed to survive the fire by jumping out of a second-story window, according to police.
The fire occurred on Aug. 5, 2020, when Bui, Seymour, and Siebert, the youngest of the three at 14, on that day, wanted to get revenge against the people they believed stole Bui’s cellphone in a robbery.
Police say the accused teens used an app to track the phone and Google searches to pinpoint the home of the Senegalese family of immigrants, but they…
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