Photograph Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Every day Beast/Getty/Fb
The loss of life of Money App creator Bob Lee earlier this month set off a rash of complaints about crime charges in San Francisco, with everybody from enterprise capitalists to Elon Musk utilizing the information to additional their narrative in regards to the metropolis’s ineffective legislation enforcement.
On Thursday, the information that Lee knew—and will have been using in a automobile with—his attacker upended that narrative. But most of the authentic Twitter commentators stayed silent.
On April 5, San Francisco police reported that they'd responded to a report of a stabbing at round 2:35 a.m the day earlier than and located a “43-year-old grownup male sufferer affected by obvious stab wounds.” The sufferer was later recognized as Lee, who was visiting town after lately relocating to Miami.
On the outset, police didn't launch any details about a suspect or motive within the assault. However within the hours following, buddies, acquaintances, and strangers took to Twitter to air their grievances in regards to the slaying and different violent crime within the metropolis. A few of these feedback developed into baseless hypothesis.
Former UFC fighter Jake Shields, who claimed to be a “good pal” of Lee, tweeted that the killing was “within the ‘good’ a part of town and appeared to have been focused in a random mugging/assault,” including: “Fuck San Francisco.” (In an interview with The Every day Beast later that day, Shields defined that “nobody has something unhealthy to say about [Lee],” which was why he was “nearly sure this needs to be a random assault.”)
Shields’ tweet spurred a response from Musk, who tweeted that violent crime within the metropolis had turn out to be “horrific” and requested San Francisco District Legal professional Brooke Jenkins if town was “taking stronger motion to incarcerate repeat violent offenders.”
Enterprise capitalist David Sacks took to his common All In podcast in charge felony justice reform advocates for the crime, saying he would wager “dollars to dimes” that the case was much like one in Los Angeles, by which a girl was “principally stabbed for no motive by a psychotic homeless particular person.”
“It appears to me that the elected leaders and these nonprofits .. are setting free on us a predatory felony or psychotic component that jeopardizes our security and makes these cities unliveable,” he mentioned.
Per week later, police introduced the arrest of Nima Momeni, a small-time tech govt who they mentioned knew Lee personally. Citing police sources, native outlet Mission Native reported on Thursday that the 2 have been driving via downtown San Francisco in a automobile registered to Momeni when a confrontation occurred. Momeni stabbed Lee a number of occasions with a knife, the outlet mentioned.
Officers declined to touch upon the main points of the killing at a press convention Thursday, however did provide their ideas on the commentary swirling across the incident. Jenkins particularly singled out Musk, whom she accused of “unfold[ing] misinformation at a time when police try to unravel a really troublesome case.”
“All of us ought to and should do higher about not contributing to the unfold of such misinformation with out having precise information to underlie the statements that we make,” she mentioned. “Victims deserve that and the residents of San Francisco deserve that.”
Police Chief William Scott added that the homicide was “extra about human nature … than it's about our metropolis.”
“Put it in some other metropolis [and] I don’t imagine it might have modified the circumstances one bit,” he mentioned. “Most individuals who commit homicides know the those who they kill, the analysis exhibits that.”
Musk and Sacks didn't reply to information of the arrest on Twitter and didn't instantly reply to requests for remark from The Every day Beast.
Shields acknowledged the arrest briefly, tweeting that he was “shocked it was somebody who knew him as a result of I've even seen bob In a disagreement however completely satisfied has been arrested.” Requested whether or not he would dial again his criticism of town in gentle of the information, nonetheless, he responded: “No San Francisco continues to be fully fucked.”
In a textual content to The Every day Beast, Shields doubled down: “Yeah I believe crime is totally uncontrolled in sf. Bob realizing his killer makes no distinction with the crime downside in sf.”
“The streets are coated in human shit, syringes and damaged glass from knocked out home windows,” he continued. “The SFPD seemingly solely caught this man as a result of it was so excessive profile and so they truly had stress to do one thing.”
San Francisco has a comparatively low murder price in comparison with different main cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, and newly tech-popular Miami, in line with 2021 FBI crime statistics. In 2019, town noticed the bottom variety of homicides in additional than 60 years, although that quantity elevated barely within the years throughout and after the pandemic.
There have been 13 reported murders within the metropolis up to now this 12 months, in line with the SFPD—the identical as the identical time interval final 12 months.