A technological guru has been arrested this Thursday for the stabbing murder of Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App, in San Francisco. The crime sowed the debate on crime and the ‘homeless’ in the Californian city, since at first it was believed that it had been a homeless person who had killed the businessman. Until the very own Elon Musk gave life to this rumor.
Lee was found stumbling and bleeding from a stab wound on the streets of San Francisco around 2:30 a.m. local time on April 4. Lee, 43, later died of his injuries at a hospital.
More than a week later, nima momeni38, the founder of software company Expand IT, has been arrested on suspicion of murder, San Francisco Police Chief William Scott said at an evening news conference.
“We can confirm that Mr. Lee and Mr. Momeni knew each other,” Scott said, though he declined to describe the nature of their relationship or why they were together that night, Reuters reports.
Lee’s murder sparked a furor in san francisco and elsewhere for crime in the city amid growing homelessness and public drug use.
Criticism against Elon Musk
Among those critics was billionaire SpaceX founder and Twitter owner Elon Musk, who tweeted that “violent crime in San Francisco is horrible” and accused the city of releasing violent criminals too easily.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins responded to Musk at Thursday’s press conference, accusing him of spreading misinformation about the crime.
“I must point out that the reckless and irresponsible statements such as those contained in Mr. Musk’s tweet that assume incorrect circumstances surrounding Mr. Lee’s death serve to mislead the world in its perceptions of San Francisco and also negatively impact the pursuit of justice for crime victims,” Jenkins said. .
The motives of the murder
San Francisco prosecutors, who called the killing “planned and deliberate” in court documents filed for the hearing, wrote that a close friend of Lee’s, identified only as “Witness 1,” described spending time with the Cash App founder. , Momeni and her sister the day before the murder.
Witness 1 told investigators that Momeni questioned Lee, 43, that afternoon about whether his sister was “using drugs or something inappropriate”, according to the documents. The friend said Lee assured him none of that had happened.
Investigators who gained access to Lee’s phones after his death discovered a FaceTime call between him and Momeni’s sisterwhose name is not identified in court documents.
They also found a text from the sister that read, “I just wanted to make sure you were doing it right. Because I know that Nima was very hard on you and thank you for being such an elegant man who handles it with class. I love you, selfish idiot».
Witness 1 said it was unclear whether Lee had been intimate with Momeni’s sister, who is married but whose relationship with her husband was described as “in jeopardy”. The sister and her husband attended Momeni’s court hearing on Friday.
Surveillance camera footage shows Momeni arriving at her sister’s apartment at 8:31 pm. on April 3, according to court documents, followed by Lee about four hours later. Cameras caught both men leaving the apartment about 30 minutes before the murder.
The two men are seen on camera footage driving to a remote area where prosecutors believe the stabbing occurred.
