Silicon Valley tech executive arrested in murder of CashApp founder Bob Lee

A suspect has been arrested in the slaying of CashApp founder Bob Lee, The San Francisco Chronicle and Mission Local reported Thursday.

"The man is a tech executive, according to the [police] report," said the short Chronicle report.

According to the Local report, the arrest happened in Emeryville, across the bay from San Francisco and south of Berkeley. Mission Local reported the address corresponded to IT Consultant and Entrepreneur Nima Momeni of Expand IT, Inc.

Notable tech personalities in the city, including Twitter CEO Elon Musk, had claimed that the predawn knifing of Lee on April 4 was nothing more than a robbery and random attack.

"Many people I know have been severely assaulted," the Twitter billionaire proclaimed. "Violent crime in SF is horrific and even if attackers are caught, they are often released immediately."

Lee was an investor in several science and tech companies, including Musk's SpaceX.

Police explained that the robbery and random attack claims from Musk never made sense with the actual evidence.

"Lee and Momeni were portrayed by police as being familiar with one another," said Mission Local. "In the wee hours of April 4, they were purportedly driving together through downtown San Francisco in a car registered to the suspect. Some manner of confrontation allegedly commenced while both men were in the vehicle and potentially continued after Lee exited the car."

Momeni is suspected of stabbing Lee many times and the knife was recovered near the location on Main Street, the Local reported.

"This scenario would explain in part why Lee was walking through a portion of Main Street in which there is little to no foot traffic at 2:30 a.m.," the report explained. "That was one of several incongruous circumstances surrounding Lee’s violent death, which law-enforcement sources from the get-go felt made it far from a straightforward or random crime."

The report noted that there have been a number of killings in San Francisco - though Lee's received by far the most attention.

"Lee’s death, however, was packaged in the media and on social media into a highlight reel of recent San Francisco misfortunes and crimes: large groups of young people brawling at Stonestown; the abrupt closure of the mid-market Whole Foods, leaving San Franciscans just eight other Whole Foods within city limits; the severe beating of former fire commissioner Don Carmignani in the Marina District, allegedly by belligerent homeless people — it all adds up to a feeling of a city coming undone," Mission Local described.

It ignores the history of most of the city and its residents and "omits potentially mitigating details of the individual events," the report said. Carmignani's attack came after he first pepper-sprayed the homeless man who attacked him, the Local said.

Read the full report at Mission Local.