We originally coved this story as an example of how we can't count on others to help us in a dire situation. Now a suspect has been arrested for the homicide. Turns out the two knew each other.
Records show that Nima Momeni, 38, has been booked on a murder charge and taken to the San Francisco County Jail. The complaint is murder with a specific allegation enhancement charging that the murder was done with a knife, according to San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins.
According to reports, Momeni was an Emeryville resident and IT entrepreneur.
In a press conference on Thursday, San Francisco Police Chief William Scott and District Attorney Jenkins stated that there is evidence showing Momeni knew Lee and the crime was not a random act of street violence. The suspect is accused of stabbing Lee, the creator of Cash App and Chief Product Officer of MobileCoin, early on April 4 in San Francisco's Rincon Hill district.
This development makes the original story make more sense as reported by the San Francisco Standard:
Tech executive Bob Lee walked up an empty San Francisco street in the early hours of Tuesday gripping his side with one hand and his cellphone in the other, leaving a trail of blood behind him.
“Help!” he screamed into his phone. “Someone stabbed me.”
Those were some of the last words Lee said on a 911 call before collapsing on a Rincon Hill sidewalk.
Surveillance footage reviewed by The Standard shows Lee, who had already been stabbed, walking up Main Street away from the Bay Bridge at around 2:30 a.m. Lee crosses the intersection at Harrison Street and walks up to a parked white Camry with its hazard lights flashing.
Lee then lifts his shirt—as if to show the driver his wound and ask for help—and falls to the ground after the car drives away, the footage shows. He gets up and walks back toward the Bay Bridge before falling to the ground again outside an apartment building...
Lee approaches the white Camry and asks for help. The driver leaves. Lee bleeds out before any help arrives. Let's look at some points for discussion:
Lee is alone. We are all more vulnerable alone.
It's 2:30 in the morning. Probably not many people in the area. The original story made us wonder why Lee is out walking around downtown at that hour.
The driver in the white Camry drives off when Lee approaches. If our first reaction is to ask why didn't the driver help, we should put ourselves in the driver's shoes -- it's 2:30 a.m. and a guy comes up to you with some story about being stabbed. You live and work in San Francisco. You know how dangerous it's become. You're just trying to do your work (you have your flashers on). Probably a good idea to get way from what ever is happening so we are not attacked by the guy who is bleeding or to avoid the attackers that could be following him. The headline on the story could have easily been "Newspaper Delivery Woman Stabbed While Helping Man". Or, like many people in cities now, the driver could have just thought, "not my problem" and left.
Let's admit the great response time from SFPD -- six minutes! That's pretty darn good response time considering many jurisdictions are looking at 20 or 30 minute response times -- if they even respond at all. In San Francisco, as with other communities in the area, there has been movement to decrease or "defund" municipal police departments.
Six minutes is an eternity when you are seriously injured. Alone with no medical supplies and no training. Help that is six minutes away might as well be six hours away.
Knives Are DEADLY Weapons
Just because we are used to seeing a myriad of knives in our everyday lives, we cannot allow ourselves to be lulled into complacency about their potential for killing us. We delved into this whole subject about familiar objects like knives and screwdrivers being used as deadly weapons here.
Accept that you can be attacked with an edged weapon.
Train in a wholistic fashion to seriously consider having some kind of response for knife attacks.
Unfortunately, now it's alleged that Lee died at the hands of a friend.