Gavin Seymour, right, was sentenced on Friday to four decades behind bars for setting fire to a Denver home that killed five Senegalese immigrants on Aug. 5, 2020. (Denver Prosecutor’s Office)
One of three teenagers who thought they were torching the house of the people who robbed them but instead killed five innocent immigrants including two young children, received his fate on Friday.
A Denver judge sentenced 19-year-old Gavin Seymour to 40 years in prison for the Aug. 5, 2020, fire. Seymour was just 16 years old when he, along with Kevin Bui, also 16 at the time, and then-15-year-old Dillon Siebert, sought revenge on the people who stole Bui’s phone during a drug deal, authorities said.
Somehow, the trio came to believe the robbers lived at a home in Denver’s Green Valley Ranch neighborhood, according to an arrest affidavit. They went to a costume store and bought hockey-style masks and broke into the back door of the home with containers filled with gasoline and doused the walls with the accelerant before setting it ablaze and running away. The home quickly became fully engulfed in flames.
A police officer nearby saw the fire and tried to break through the front door but the smoke and flames were too strong. Three people jumped from a second-story window to safety. But five people — Djibril “Jibby” Diol, his 23-year-old wife Adja, and their 21-month-old daughter, Khadija, along with Diol’s sister Hassan and her 6-month-old daughter, Hawa Beye — were found dead at the front door of the home. They had nothing to do with robbing Bui.
Police said they were able to place Seymour, Bui, and Siebert at the scene through their cell phones. The defendants were also captured on video at the store buying the masks, authorities said. Cops arrested the three in January 2021 on dozens of charges including first-degree murder and arson.
Prosecutors filed 60 charges against Seymour. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in January in exchange for the other 59 charges being dropped with an agreed-upon sentence range between 16 and 40 years.
Local NBC affiliate KUSA described Friday’s hours-long hearing as emotionally charged with people from both sides pleading their case.
“You don’t deserve jail – you deserve the death penalty – but since we don’t have that in Colorado – give the maximum,” said family member Hapsa Ba.
Hamady Diol, who lost his son, daughter, and grandchildren in the fire, called into the hearing from Senegal.
“I’m powerless. I’m unlearned — but know that the people you killed they couldn’t even kill a fly,” he said through a translator. “The people you killed were my hope and life. Know you haven’t just killed five people — myself and their mother — we’re breathing — but we’re dead.”
For his part, Seymour sounded contrite.
“I relive August 5th, 2020, every day I wake up,” Seymour said. “I want to apologize for my role in the arson. There is not a moment I don’t feel remorse. I wish it was me instead of them.”
His parents said he fell into peer pressure but is a good kid.
“This tragedy does not define his soul,” said his mother, Stephanie Tyler. “Gavin is not a monster — He made a grave decision. He is ready to atone.”
In the end, Denver District Court Judge Karen Brody gave Seymour as many years in prison as she could under the plea agreement.
“This is a tragedy that is, I’m sure for everyone involved, incomprehensible,” Brody said, according to the Denver Post. “There was a loss of the most innocent of lives.”
Siebert was sentenced to seven years in juvenile prison and faces a 26-year suspended sentence should he violate his parole, according to KUSA. Bui, whose case is ongoing, is due in court on Thursday.
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