The lawyer for Nima Momeni, the alleged murderer of CashApp founder Bob Lee, suggested the drugs in Lee’s system may have contributed to his death, following the release of an autopsy report on Tuesday.
Paula Canny, Momeni’s attorney, made the comments after a brief court appearance in which the suspect, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, agreed to delay his arraignment for two weeks.
The autopsy report showed Lee had cocaine and ketamine in his system at the time of his death on April 4. He had two stab wounds to his upper chest and a third injury on his leg, the New York Post reported.
ADVERTISEMENT
“There’s a lot of drugs in Bob Lee’s system. Bob Lee’s system is like the Walgreens of recreational drugs,” Canny said of the autopsy results. “[People on drugs] make bad decisions.”
She went on to suggest Lee might have been saved by medical professionals had he not had drugs in his body.
Nima Momeni briefly appears in court flanked by his lawyer Paula Canny.
Decca MuldowneyMedical staff at San Francisco General Hospital battled to save Lee’s life after he was found bleeding profusely from stab wounds on a San Francisco sidewalk, the New York Post reported.
Two of the injuries to his heart were stapled shut, and doctors gave him a massive dose of adrenaline, according to the outlet, but were ultimately unable to save him and he was pronounced dead on the operating table at 6:49 a.m.
San Francisco district attorney Brooke Jenkins pushed back hard on Canny’s comments.
“We are accustomed as prosecutors to having the reputations of our victims be denigrated by the defense,” Jenkins told a press conference after Momeni’s court appearance. “Regardless of whether somebody has or has not done drugs, that does not give someone a license to kill them.”
“We believe that, regardless of whatever that toxicology report may show, that Mr. Momeni is guilty of murder,” she said.
Prosecutors say Momeni stabbed Lee after the two men allegedly had a dispute about Momeni’s sister, Khazar Elyassnia, who he believed had been taking drugs with Lee.
A week after the killing, authorities unlocked Lee’s phone and found a text message from his sister, in which Elyassnia said, “I know nima came wayyyyyy down hard on you And thank you for being such a classy man handling it with class.”
Momeni behaved strangely in the days following the killing, a neighbor of his told The Daily Beast. Momeni suggested the neighbor travel with him to Colombia, and began offering to give away some of his expensive possessions, including a valuable Eames chair.
Exclusive footage obtained by The Daily Beast captured Momeni’s arrest by San Francisco police at his converted warehouse home in the East Bay in the early hours of April 13.
Momeni is scheduled to appear in court again on May 18. Canny said he plans to plead not guilty.
