Money App founder Bob Lee was stabbed to dying after argument concerning the suspect’s sister, courtroom paperwork present
Money App founder Bob Lee was fatally stabbed by an IT guide close to downtown San Francisco after the 2 males — who police say knew one another — acquired into an argument over the suspect’s sister, in line with courtroom paperwork obtained Friday by NBC Information.
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 line with the paperwork. At the very least one of many stab wounds punctured Lee’s coronary heart.
At one level, Momeni’s sister despatched a textual content to Lee, the paperwork present. “Simply wished to ensure your doing okay Trigger know nima got here wayyyyyy down arduous on you,” she wrote, in line with the paperwork.
“Thanks for being such a cultured 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 issues of safety within the Bay Space.
He will probably be charged with homicide, San Francisco’s district legal professional advised reporters on Thursday. He’s scheduled to be arraigned on April 25, a spokesman for the district legal professional’s workplace confirmed, and he faces 26 years to life behind bars if convicted.
The courtroom paperwork, which the San Francisco district legal professional’s workplace filed Friday as a part of their try and detain the suspect with out bail, piece collectively the occasions that led to the stabbing.
Lee and a pal interviewed by police had been hanging out in a lodge room in San Francisco on the night of April 3, in line with the paperwork. The pal, recognized within the filings as Witness 1, seen Lee having a dialog with Momeni.
The witness heard 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 line with the paperwork.
Later that night time, a surveillance digital camera recorded Lee and Momeni moving into Momeni’s white BMW outdoors his sister’s house. Extra footage obtained by police exhibits 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. Momeni then tossed the knife, acquired again in his automotive and sped away.
When cops arrived on the scene round 2:30 a.m., in line with the paperwork, they discovered Lee unresponsive, mendacity on the street and bleeding “uncontrollably.” When officers returned to canvass the world, they discovered the blood-stained knife.
“Defendant didn’t use some sort of pocket knife, however a cooking knife from an house and kitchen,” the courtroom paperwork state. “This was a deliberate and deliberate assault.”
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.
The 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 Broaden IT Inc. and as a graduate of the College of California, Berkeley.
Nevertheless, a spokesperson for U.C. Berkeley advised NBC Information on Friday that the college has “no report 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 know-how officer of Sq. (now generally known as Block), a monetary know-how agency co-founded by the previous Twitter head Jack Dorsey.
He went on to create Money App, a widely known cash switch service.
Lee additionally was an investor in Musk’s SpaceX enterprise, in addition to different tech firms, such because the social audio app Clubhouse, in line with his LinkedIn profile.
Miguel Almaguer, Bianca Seward and Katie Wall contributed.