Cash App Founder Died of Stab Wounds, Had Cocaine in His System, Autopsy Report Says

The Portside condo complex near where Bob Lee was stabbed. (Lear Zhou/The Epoch Times)

Cash App founder Bob Lee, who was killed last month in San Francisco, died from multiple stab wounds while having cocaine, alcohol, and other substances in his system, the city’s medical examiner said Monday.

The 43-year-old software engineer had two stab wounds to the upper chest and a third to his right hip, according to an autopsy report. The second stab wound to his left chest penetrated only two to three inches but pierced his heart.

A toxicology report included in the autopsy report showed that Lee had ketamine, cocaine, and cocaethylene—a byproduct of the liver processing cocaine and alcohol simultaneously—in his system when he died. The exact amounts of each substance were not given.

Lee was found on the sidewalk in front of a condominium building with stab wounds on April 4, in the upscale Rincon Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, at around 2:30 a.m. local time. By the time emergency medical responders arrived at the scene, Lee was unconscious, pulseless, and gasping for breath, according to the report.

Medical responders placed a breathing tube down Lee’s trachea and rushed him to San Francisco General Hospital. He arrived around 3 a.m., still without a pulse, and doctors tried to save him with blood transfusions, the report showed.

The doctors cut into Lee’s chest and closed two wounds to his heart with staples. They cross-clamped the aorta and tried to restart his heart using both intracardiac massage and intracardiac epinephrine, according to the report. Lee was transferred from the emergency department to the operating room, where doctors diagnosed an injury to the apex of the right ventricle as well as a wound to the lung.

Lee was pronounced dead on the operating table at 6:49 a.m.

Victim’s Final Hours Captured on Camera

Nima Momeni, a 38-year-old tech consultant, was arrested on April 13 in Emeryville, a suburb in San Francisco, and charged with Lee’s murder.

Momeni allegedly stabbed Lee after an argument over Momeni’s younger sister, Khazar Elyassnia. A detention motion filed by the San Francisco District Attorney’s office showed that Momeni was specifically concerned about “whether his sister was doing drugs or anything inappropriate.”

Surveillance camera footage from the Millennium Tower, where Elyassnia had an apartment, showed Momeni entering the building after exiting a white BMW at around 8:31 p.m. on April 3. Lee is also seen entering the Millennium at around 12:39 a.m. on April 4, per camera footage.

At around 2:03 a.m., surveillance cameras at the Millennium captured Lee and Momeni entering Momeni’s white BMW. The car was driven to “a dark, secluded area” southbound on Main Street.

Surveillance camera footage there showed two figures matching earlier descriptions of Lee and Momeni having an apparent verbal confrontation outside of the car for several minutes before a figure matching Momeni’s description “suddenly moved toward” the other, according to the document.

“Defendant stabbed Victim three separate times, including twice in the chest. One of the stab wounds, showing a direct and clear intent to kill, penetrated Victim’s heart,” the document read.

“Immediately after stabbing Victim, Defendant threw the kitchen knife, fled the scene in his white BMW at a high rate of speed, and left Victim to slowly die,” the prosecutors added.

Lee started his tech career as an Android software engineer at Google. He later joined Square, a payment processing company founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, to develop its Android mobile app. In 2013, he founded Square Cash, now known as Cash App.

Lee is survived by two daughters.