The initial news of his death elicited a furious response from a handful of Silicon Valley executives, including billionaire Elon Musk, who blamed city leaders and suggested that uncontrolled homelessness and violence in San Francisco led to the killing. Those claims reignited a debate about public safety and public policy in the city.
But the next week, after authorities charged another tech entrepreneur in the killing, the case further exposed tensions between the tech industry and the city. Many residents – including some within the tech sector – accused industry leaders of making snap judgments and using the tragedy to advance their political agenda.
The charges also raised questions about what exactly led to the fatal attack. Here is what we know about Lee’s death and the fissures it has revealed in San Francisco.
Who was Bob Lee?
Lee returned to San Francisco often and was the chief product officer of cryptocurrency startup MobileCoin when he died. He was the father of two teenage daughters, who both lived near the city with his former wife.
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“Bob would give you the shirt off his back,” his father wrote in a Facebook post after his death. “He would never look down on anyone and adhered to a strict no-judgment philosophy.” A native of St. Louis, Lee got his start building webpages for small businesses near his parents’ store, according to Oliver Lee, his brother, who described him as a brilliant software engineer, a lover of art and music festivals, and an idealist who sought throughout his career to democratize access to technology.
Before taking on the role at MobileCoin in 2021, Lee was instrumental in the creation of Cash App, a service that allows users to quickly send and receive money from their phones. He was admired among engineers for his work as a software engineer at Google, where he worked on Android, an operating system for smartphones. He was also a startup adviser, investing in companies that include SpaceX and Clubhouse, according to an older LinkedIn page.
He befriended many in the tech world and was close with Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, who shared a screenshot of the first Cash App exchange – $4 sent to him from Lee.
What happened to him?
Lee was in San Francisco for business and to visit family members after recently relocating to Miami. According to the documents released by prosecutors, who have charged entrepreneur Nima Momeni with murder, Lee was drinking with Momeni’s younger sister, Khazar Momeni, at an apartment in downtown San Francisco the afternoon before Lee died. A witness described by prosecutors as a longtime friend of his said that he and Lee then went to Lee’s hotel room, where Nima Momeni questioned him over the phone about “whether his sister was doing drugs or anything inappropriate.”
The witness said that Lee reassured Nima Momeni that “nothing inappropriate had happened,” the document states. The witness said that he and Lee continued to hang out until after midnight. Surveillance footage showed that Lee then went to Khazar Momeni’s residence at a luxury apartment building for roughly 80 minutes.
According to the charging documents, video showed Lee and Nima Momeni leaving together in Nima Momeni’s BMW, which he parked on a street. Later on that street, Lee was stabbed twice in the chest and once in the hip, an act that appears to have been captured in grainier images from a more distant camera.
Prosecutors accused Momeni of stabbing Lee with the 4-inch blade of a kitchen knife before throwing it in the parking lot and speeding away in his car, leaving Lee to “slowly die” on the street.
Surveillance camera footage caught Lee staggering and clutching his wounds on a street outside a high-rise, where he called for help.
A week later, after investigators were able to unlock Lee’s phones, they discovered a text message from Khazar Momeni that prosecutors said showed she was concerned about Lee’s interaction with her brother. “Just wanted to make sure your doing ok Cause I know nima came wayyyyyy down hard on you,” it read, according to court documents.
Nima Momeni, the owner of a tech business in the East Bay city of Emeryville, was taken into custody and booked Thursday into the San Francisco County Jail. He has not entered a plea. His lawyer, Paula Canny, said prosecutors were wrong to accuse him of murder because they lacked proof of premeditation or malice.
She also said that any dispute between Nima Momeni and Lee had nothing to do with romance. “I wouldn’t describe this as a crime,” Canny said in a phone interview.
How did tech executives react after the killing?
Before Lee’s death, residents in San Francisco had already been divided in their views on crime. Last summer, the city recalled its then-district attorney, Chesa Boudin, who was known for progressive policies such as eliminating cash bail and seeking to reduce prison populations, after 2 1/2 years in office.
Recovering from the throes of the pandemic, the city’s downtown area is routinely empty of office workers and has seen an increase in people living in tent encampments and using drugs in public spaces. Those upticks, as well as an increase in property crimes, have caused some to accuse the city of being lenient with people who are mentally ill or experiencing homelessness.
This set the stage for the initial reactions to Lee’s death. Some tech executives quickly speculated that Lee’s death was a random street crime. One venture capitalist, David Sacks, said he would “bet dollars to dimes” that the killing was the same as a death in Los Angeles where “a young woman was basically stabbed for no reason by a psychotic homeless person.”
Musk, the billionaire head of Twitter, which is based in San Francisco, replied “absolutely” to a tweet that included Sacks’ reaction.
How did San Francisco react after the arrest?
Many people, inside and outside the tech industry, were critical of those executives’ early reactions.
Brooke Jenkins, the San Francisco district attorney who had criticized her predecessor as being too lenient on criminals, denounced Musk on Thursday, calling his reaction to Lee’s death “reckless and irresponsible.”
National crime data shows that the rate of violent crime in the city of more than 800,000 people has remained at or near historic lows for more than a decade, and that the murder rate in 2020 was low compared with that of other major American cities.
Still, some have charged that the city does not feel safe, despite the statistics. On Thursday, Jason Calacanis, a tech investor who had spoken on Twitter about “rampant violence” in the city, was asked if he had changed his mind after the arrest of Momeni. “When was the last time you walked a mile in San Francisco?” he replied by email. “Do you think it is safe?”
Brett Ashton, 56, who is Black and has worked for tech companies in the Bay Area for more than 30 years, said he felt that Calacanis had crossed over into new territory by blaming the local community.
“Their comments are very much about Black people and brown people and people that don’t look like them,” he said. “They are just pushing a narrative that tech bros are being victimized by a dystopian hellscape.”
