Bethesda Bunker Fire: Man Resentenced To Five Years In Prison

BETHESDA, MD — A Bethesda man was resentenced to five years in prison for the death of 21-year-old Askia Khafra, a man he had hired to build tunnels for a nuclear bunker under his home.

Daniel Beckwitt, 30, has already been in prison for three years and was originally sentenced to nine years in prison in 2019. Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Margaret Schweitzer noted that Beckwitt is already eligible for parole, since he's served more than a quarter of his sentence, and ordered that he will serve five years of supervised probation after his release and perform 250 hours of community service.

“I hope this is your opportunity to give back to our community,” she said. “I hope you do what you can do, which is use your intelligence for good.”

Beckwitt was convicted of second-degree “depraved heart” murder and involuntary manslaughter in Khafra's death. Khafra met Beckwitt online and Beckwitt had invested money in a company that Khafra was trying to launch.

Beckwitt hired Khafra to work on the tunnels under his home, and Khafra was found in the basement of Beckwitt's home after a fire in the house in September 2017.

An appeals court in Maryland overturned Beckwitt's murder conviction in January 2021, saying Beckwitt did not demonstrate “an extreme disregard for human life reasonably likely to cause death.” The Maryland Court of Appeals upheld the manslaughter charge, though, saying he had failed to provide a safe work environment.

Prosecutors said Beckwitt went to extreme measures to keep his bunker project a secret, including telling Khafra to wear “blackout glasses” before Beckwitt would drive him to his house in Bethesda. Beckwitt also tried to trick Khafra into believing they were in Virginia, prosecutors said.

Khafra would work in the tunnels for days, eating, sleeping, and urinating and defecating into a bucket that Beckwitt gave to him. There was a hole in the concrete basement floor led to a shaft that dropped down 20 feet into tunnels that branched out roughly 200 feet. After the fire and Khafra's death, investigators concluded the fire was started by a defective electrical outlet in the basement.

“The behavior was grossly negligent on so many levels,” said Montgomery County prosecutor Marybeth Ayres on Tuesday. “It wasn't just one thing.”

Beckwitt's defense attorney said Beckwitt tried to save Khafra, screaming for help from neighbors.

“This was an accidental death, pure and simple, and it wasn't intended,” Robert Bonsib, the defense attorney, told the judge on Tuesday.

Khafra's father spoke to the judge Tuesday and expressed his frustration with Beckwitt's sentence.

"I feel that as a victim, all that mattered to the system were rules, procedures, legalese — not the overarching fact that my son, my dear son’s life, had been deliberately terminated,” he said to the judge before Beckwitt's new sentence was ordered.

Schweitzer, the judge, said she understood the frustration Khafra's family was feeling.

“Please do not equate the number of years (in prison) to the value of the victim's life in this case,” Schweitzer said. “It just can't happen.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.