On Friday, May 17, 20-year-old Kevin Bouie pleaded guilty to the murder of a family of five over a stolen Apple iPhone. The fact that the young man confused the houses and set fire to the wrong door adds to the horror, although the crime is already serious.
A resident of Colorado, USA, set fire to a house in Denver in 2020, thinking he was taking revenge for the theft of an iPhone. According to the Denver District Attorney’s Office, he pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder. Bui, who was 16 years old at the time of the fire on August 5, 2020, was prosecuted as an adult.
The arrest affidavit states that Bui’s iPhone was stolen in the course of drug trafficking. Investigators said he intended to set fire to the house of those who robbed him. He tracked the iPhone using a special Apple application for such cases.
Investigators said that Bouie somehow misidentified the property and set fire to the house of a Senegalese immigrant family instead. The fire killed five people, including a 21-month-old child and a 6-month-old baby.
NBC News reported that as part of the plea agreement, 60 other charges were dropped from Bouie, including first-degree murder and arson. He faces 60 years in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced on July 2.
Bouie was not alone and is the last of three people to plead guilty in connection with the fire. Dillon Siebert, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder under a plea agreement, was sentenced last year to three years in juvenile detention and seven years in the state’s youth prison. Gavin Seymour was sentenced to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder in March.
While programs like Find My can be incredibly accurate, they are not entirely foolproof. In 2022, a SWAT team in Denver mistakenly broke into a 77-year-old woman’s home looking for a truckload of stolen guns and an iPhone. The woman’s lawyer said the police relied on the Find My app, which ultimately led them to the wrong address. In March, a jury awarded the woman $3.76 million in compensation.
Source: Business Insider