Flowers and playing cards left as folks paying tribute to Bob Lee close to the Portside condo constructing in San Francisco, California, on April 7, 2023.
Tayfun Coskun | Anadolu Company | Getty Photographs
Money App founder Bob Lee was fatally stabbed by an IT guide close to downtown San Francisco after the 2 males bought into an argument over the suspect’s sister, in keeping with courtroom paperwork obtained by NBC Information on Friday.
The suspect — 38-year-old Nima Momeni of Emeryville, a suburb of San Francisco — drove Lee to a secluded space and stabbed him thrice with a 4-inch kitchen knife, together with twice within the chest, in keeping with the paperwork. A minimum of one of many stab wounds punctured Lee’s coronary heart.
Within the wake of the dispute, Momeni’s sister despatched a textual content to Lee, the paperwork present. “Simply needed to ensure your doing okay Trigger [I] know nima got here wayyyyyy down arduous on you,” she wrote, in keeping with the paperwork.
“Thanks for being such an aesthetic man dealing with it with class,” she added. “Love you Egocentric pricks.”
Momeni was arrested on Thursday morning after a nine-day manhunt that attracted nationwide consideration and intensified scrutiny on public questions of safety within the Bay Space.
Extra from NBC Information:
He might be charged with homicide, San Francisco’s district legal professional informed reporters on Thursday. He’s scheduled to be arraigned on April 25, a spokesman for the district legal professional’s workplace confirmed. He faces 26 years to life behind bars.
The courtroom paperwork, which the San Francisco district legal professional’s workplace filed Friday as a part of their try to detain the suspect with out bail, try to piece collectively the occasions that led to the stabbing.
Lee and a good friend interviewed by police had been hanging out in a resort room in San Francisco on the night of April 3, in keeping with the paperwork. The good friend, recognized within the filings as Witness 1, seen Lee having a dialog with Momeni.
The witness noticed Momeni asking Lee whether or not Momeni’s sister had been “doing medication or something inappropriate” earlier that day. Lee needed to “reassure” Momeni that “nothing inappropriate had occurred,” in keeping with the paperwork.
Later that evening, a surveillance digicam recorded Lee and Momeni stepping into Momeni’s white BMW exterior Momeni’s sister’s condo. Further footage obtained by police reveals the BMW heading to a “darkish and secluded space” close to downtown San Francisco.
The 2 males are later seen standing collectively on a sidewalk for a couple of minutes earlier than Momeni apparently stabs Lee. When cops arrived on the scene round 2:30 a.m., in keeping with the paperwork, they discovered Lee unresponsive, mendacity on the street and bleeding “uncontrollably.”
“Defendant didn’t use some sort of pocket knife, however a cooking knife from an condo and kitchen,” the courtroom paperwork state. “This was a deliberate and deliberate assault.”
Nima Momeni, the 38-year-old founding father of software program firm Develop IT, seems earlier than Choose Christine Van Aken, accused of the stabbing homicide of Money App founder Bob Lee in a courtroom sketch in San Francisco, California, April 14, 2023. Choose Van Aken ordered that Momeni be portrayed in sketches as unidentifiable to the general public and jury pool.
Vicki Behringer | Reuters
The revelation that Lee and Momeni knew one another has undercut hypothesis that the Money App creator was killed in a random act of violence.
Silicon Valley mogul Elon Musk, in a tweet that drew the condemnation of the district attorney, appeared to pin the blame for the killing on “repeat violent offenders.”
Momeni describes himself as an entrepreneur on his LinkedIn web page. He lists himself because the proprietor of a tech firm known as Develop IT Inc. and as a graduate of the College of California, Berkeley.
Nevertheless, a spokesperson for U.C. Berkeley informed NBC Information on Friday that the college has “no file of commencement or attendance” for an individual named Nima Momeni.
Lee had been working because the chief product officer of the cryptocurrency firm MobileCoin. He was beforehand the chief expertise officer of Sq. (now often called Block), a monetary expertise agency co-founded by the previous Twitter head Jack Dorsey.
He went on to create Money App, a well known cash switch service.
Lee additionally was an investor in Musk’s SpaceX enterprise, in addition to different tech corporations, such because the social audio app Clubhouse, in keeping with his LinkedIn profile.
