The last of three defendants who set the wrong house on fire in August 2020, killing five Senegalese family members, pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder in Denver District Court Friday.

Kevin Bui faces up to 48 years for each count. 

First Judicial District Court Judge Karen Brody threw out 60 other charges, including first-degree murder, in exchange for the guilty plea. She set Bui’s sentencing for 9 a.m. July 2, indicating the hearing could take several hours.

Bui, 20, was 16 at the time of the fire but prosecuted as an adult, charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder, arson and burglary. He has been portrayed by prosecutors as the ringleader of a group of three friends who started the Aug. 5, 2020, fire in the middle of the night because he believed people who had recently robbed him lived in the home after mistakenly tracking his stolen iPhone there using an app.

Bui, in a dark green jail outfit, pleaded guilty to the two felony charges which fold in the murders of five victims. His parents, who only speak Vietnamese, were in the courtroom and listened with the help of a translator. 

He is the last of the three teenagers to enter a plea in the fire that killed Djibril Diol, 29 and Adja Diol, 23 and their 22-month-old daughter, Khadija Diol, and their relative, Hassan Diol, 25, and her 6-month-old daughter Hawa Baye. Three other people escaped by jumping from the second floor of the home.

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. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder under a deal that prosecutors and the defense said balanced his lesser role in planning the fire, his remorse and interest in rehabilitation with the horror of the crime.

In March, Gavin Seymour, 19, was sentenced to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to one count of second-degree murder.

The three started the deadly fire August 2020 for what they intended as revenge for a robbery a few weeks earlier, according to information from investigators during a preliminary hearing. Bui’s phone had been stolen, and he used Find My iPhone to track it to a location he believed was 5312 North Truckee Street, where several members of the Senegalese family lived.

The teenagers did not realize they had targeted the wrong house until news reports of the deaths broke, authorities said. Bui’s attorneys have argued that he did not intend to kill anyone when he and his co-defendants planned to set the fire.

In the several months between the fire and before police made arrests, the fire generated fear in the local West African community about whether it was a targeted hate crime.

Seymour’s attorneys fought hard to get the search warrant police executed to make the arrests suppressed, saying investigators using a reverse Google search for the home’s address was too broad. 

The Colorado Supreme Court has upheld the fruits of that Denver Police Department search warrant that detectives used four years ago to identify the teenagers.

Attorneys for 19-year-old Gavin Seymour, one of the teenagers charged with first-degree murder, sought to have the evidence from a warrant for Google searches of the destroyed home’s address, on North Truckee Street in Green Valley Ranch, excluded from his case. They argued the warrant violated his protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The justices found in a split decision released last year the evidence uncovered will be admissible in court because police acted on a good-faith belief the warrant was constitutional.

Seymour’s guilty plea soon followed that ruling. 

This story was written with the help of the Associated Press and former Denver Gazette reporter Julia Cardi.