The death of Cash App creator Bob Lee earlier this month set off a rash of complaints about crime rates in San Francisco, with everyone from venture capitalists to Elon Musk using the news to further their narrative about the city’s ineffective law enforcement.
On Thursday, the news that Lee knew—and may have been riding in a car with—his attacker upended that narrative. Yet many of the original Twitter commentators stayed silent.
On April 5, San Francisco police reported that they had responded to a report of a stabbing at around 2:35 a.m the day before and found a “43-year-old adult male victim suffering from apparent stab wounds.” The victim was later identified as Lee, who was visiting the city after recently relocating to Miami.
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At the outset, police did not release any information about a suspect or motive in the attack. But in the hours following, friends, acquaintances, and strangers took to Twitter to air their grievances about the slaying and other violent crime in the city. Some of those comments evolved into baseless speculation.
Former UFC fighter Jake Shields, who claimed to be a “good friend” of Lee, tweeted that the killing was “in the ‘good’ part of the city and appeared to have been targeted in a random mugging/attack,” adding: “Fuck San Francisco.” (In an interview with The Daily Beast later that day, Shields explained that “no one has anything bad to say about [Lee],” which was why he was “almost certain this has to be a random attack.”)
Shields’ tweet spurred a response from Musk, who tweeted that violent crime in the city had become “horrific” and asked San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins if the city was “taking stronger action to incarcerate repeat violent offenders.”
Venture capitalist David Sacks took to his popular All In podcast to blame criminal justice reform advocates for the crime, saying he would bet “dollars to dimes” that the case was similar to one in Los Angeles, in which a woman was “basically stabbed for no reason by a psychotic homeless person.”
“It seems to me that the elected leaders and these nonprofits .. are setting loose on us a predatory criminal or psychotic element that jeopardizes our safety and makes these cities unliveable,” he said.
A week later, police announced the arrest of Nima Momeni, a small-time tech executive who they said knew Lee personally. Citing police sources, local outlet Mission Local reported on Thursday that the two were driving through downtown San Francisco in a car registered to Momeni when a confrontation occurred. Momeni stabbed Lee several times with a knife, the outlet said.
Officials declined to comment on the details of the killing at a press conference Thursday, but did offer their thoughts on the commentary swirling around the incident. Jenkins specifically singled out Musk, whom she accused of “spread[ing] misinformation at a time when police are trying to solve a very difficult case.”
“We all should and must do better about not contributing to the spread of such misinformation without having actual facts to underlie the statements that we make,” she said. “Victims deserve that and the residents of San Francisco deserve that.”
Police Chief William Scott added that the murder was “more about human nature … than it is about our city.”
“Put it in any other city [and] I don’t believe it would have changed the circumstances one bit,” he said. “Most people who commit homicides know the people that they kill, the research shows that.”
Musk and Sacks did not respond to news of the arrest on Twitter and did not immediately reply to requests for comment from The Daily Beast.
Shields acknowledged the arrest briefly, tweeting that he was “surprised it was someone who knew him because I've even seen bob In a disagreement but happy has been arrested.” Asked whether he would dial back his criticism of the city in light of the news, however, he responded: “No San Francisco is still completely fucked.”
In a text to The Daily Beast, Shields doubled down: “Yeah I think crime is completely out of control in sf. Bob knowing his killer makes no difference with the crime problem in sf.”
“The streets are covered in human shit, syringes and broken glass from knocked out windows,” he continued. “The SFPD likely only caught this guy because it was so high profile and they actually had pressure to do something.”
San Francisco has a relatively low homicide rate compared to other major cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, and newly tech-popular Miami, according to 2021 FBI crime statistics. In 2019, the city saw the lowest number of homicides in more than 60 years, though that number increased slightly in the years during and after the pandemic.
There have been 13 reported murders in the city so far this year, according to the SFPD—the same as the same time period last year.
