Tech executive stabbing: Consultant arrested over death of Cash App founder Bob Lee

A makeshift memorial for Bob Lee, a tech executive and investor who was fatally stabbed on the street in San Francisco on April 6, 2023. Photo / Jim Wilson, The New York Times

Nine days after the fatal, late-night stabbing of Bob Lee triggered a furious outcry over public safety in San Francisco, police said on Thursday (Friday NZT) that they had arrested an acquaintance of the tech executive on suspicion of murder.

In a news conference, the city’s police chief, Bill Scott, identified the suspect as Nima Momeni, 38, a tech consultant who knew Lee. In surveillance footage from the night of the killing, Lee can be seen staggering and clutching his side near a car on a darkened street around 2.30am on April 4, in a neighbourhood of high-rise condominiums.

The owner of an enterprise tech business in the East Bay city of Emeryville, Momeni was apprehended there after an intense investigation in which authorities had warned from the outset that Lee may have been killed by someone he knew and not in a random street crime. Momeni was booked Thursday morning into San Francisco County Jail on a murder charge, according to jail records.

That development Thursday undermined a growing narrative that the killing reflected a “lawless” city where the professional class was being threatened by random attacks and a flawed approach to criminal justice.

Scott Wiener, a Democratic state senator who represents the city, said the rush to judgment by tech luminaries such as Elon Musk and colleagues of Lee, a well-known figure in Silicon Valley, had managed to be both inaccurate and damaging to San Francisco, which has been straining to rebound from the coronavirus pandemic.

“This is the danger of making one crime into a symbol,” Wiener said. “This was a horrific, brutal murder, and I am so grateful that the police solved it so quickly. And San Francisco does have real public safety problems. But this particular crime does not appear to have anything to do with them.”

Nonetheless, the narrative persisted, even as word spread of the arrest Thursday. Jason Calacanis, a tech investor and entrepreneur, tweeted that “*everyone* has said we don’t know the details of any individual case, at the same time anyone who walks a couple of blocks in San Francisco (outside of Pac Whites where things seem to be oddly safe) knows how dangerous the city is,” making a slang reference to the affluent Pacific Heights neighbourhood.

San Francisco's Rincon Hill area, where Bob Lee was fatally stabbed on the street. Photo / Jim Wilson, The New York Times

The arrest capped days of speculation around the death of Lee, 43, a tech executive who was found bleeding by emergency medical workers about 2.35am on a pavement near the Embarcadero.

Authorities said Lee, a father of two who had recently relocated to Miami after spending most of his career in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, had been in San Francisco on business when he was assaulted.

The killing has generated waves of recriminations and heightened tensions between the city and its tech sector at a precarious moment, as San Francisco struggles to revive its downtown.

Emptied of office workers during the past three years, San Francisco has seen an increase in tent encampments and open-air drug use in its public spaces, fueling complaints that the city’s compassion for homeless and mentally ill people has complicated its ability to maintain order. Property crimes have risen during the pandemic, and enough voters felt unsafe that they ousted the local prosecutor, Chesa Boudin, last year.

But rates of violent crime have dipped or held steady over the past several years in the city of about 808,000 people. Some city officials said last week that San Francisco had been unfairly maligned by conservatives and tech leaders, and that the arrest of an acquaintance Thursday confirmed that.

“This is why you need to wait for investigations before you jump to conclusions,” said Kevin Benedicto, a police commissioner who lashed out at critics after the killing, charging that a small minority had sought “to weaponise this tragedy” for political reasons.

However, the high-profile crime has continued to highlight the city’s problems. Days after Lee was killed, for instance, a former fire commissioner was attacked with a metal pipe in the Marina District and left hospitalised; the victim’s family blamed an encampment of homeless people that he had sought to force out of the upscale neighbourhood.

Lee was known by his friends and relatives as a kind, brilliant man and a generous mentor, but also as a prodigiously energetic and social person, with an ability to stay out late even on weeknights. His online handle was “Crazy Bob,” a nickname he had earned while playing water polo in his youth.

He had risen to prominence first as the chief technology officer of payment company Square — which changed its name to Block in 2021 — and then at MobileCoin, a cryptocurrency startup based in San Francisco, where he was chief product officer at the time of his death. Colleagues said Lee also had been instrumental in creating mobile payment service Cash App.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Sharon LaFraniere, Shawn Hubler and Thomas Fuller

Photographs by: Jim Wilson

© 2023 THE NEW YORK TIMES