Everything we know about the murder of Cash App founder Bob Lee in San Francisco
High-profile tech entrepreneur Bob Lee was stabbed to death outside an apartment building in San Francisco early on Tuesday morning, grieving friends and family have confirmed.
The 43-year-old was found at 2.35am outside a luxury high rise apartment on the 300 block of Main St, near Rincon Hill and the Bay Bridge, with life-threatening stab wounds, the San Francisco Police Department said in a statement.
The tech executive was treated at the scene by first responders before being rushed to hospital where he died from his injuries, police said. No arrests have been made.
Here’s what we know so far about the murder.
‘Crazy Bob’
Bob Lee was a much-loved member of the San Francisco tech community, where he was affectionately known as Crazy Bob.
After working as an open source code developer in St Louis, Missouri, Mr Lee moved to San Francisco in his early 20s in 2004 to work as an engineer at Google, according to the San Francisco Standard. There he led the core library development for Android.
Mr Lee was headhunted by Square, becoming its 13th employee, where he helped launch the Cash App and became the payment firm’s first chief technology officer in 2011, a Linkedin profile shows.
After leaving Square in 2014, he invested in several tech startups including Clubhouse, Beeper and Faire, and the female-focused social media and networking company Present. He identified as a “stay at home dad” in an online blog post during this period.
In 2021, Mr Lee joined MobileCoin, a crypto payment firm, as its chief product officer.
Mr Lee was married to wife Krista and the couple shared two children. He had recently relocated to Miami, and was in San Francisco for a work trip when he was killed, friends said.
Random attack?
The San Francisco Police Department said in a statement that Mr Lee was found with fatal stab wounds in Downtown San Francisco between Soma and the Financial District, a block from Google’s San Francisco headquarters.
Friend and MMA fighter Jake Shields tweeted that Mr Lee appeared to have been the victim of a random mugging while out working in a “good part of the city”.
“I just found out my good friend was killed last night while walking in San Francisco. He was in the “good” part of the city and appeared to have been targeted in a random mugging/attack,” Shields wrote, adding “F*** San Francisco”.
The tweet caught the attention of Twitter CEO Elon Musk, who offered his condolences and called on San Francisco district attorney Brooke Jenkins to take tougher action against violent criminals.
“Many people I know have been severely assaulted,” Mr Musk tweeted. “Violent crime in SF is horrific and even if attackers are caught, they are often released immediately. Is the city taking stronger action to incarcerate repeat violent offenders Brooke Jenkins?”
Ms Jenkins did not immediately respond to a request by The Independent for comment about Mr Lee’s murder.
San Francisco Police said they have not made any arrests, and haven’t provided any details of suspects.
In their statement, the SFPD said responding officers had found a 43-year-old victim with stab wounds: “Officers rendered aid and summoned medics to the scene. The victim was transported to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries. Despite efforts by first responders and medical personnel, the victim succumbed to his injuries.”
Stabbing shakes San Francisco tech community
Mr Lee’s former boss Jack Dorsey was one of a many well known San Francisco tech entrepreneurs to express their shock and grief at his death.
“It’s real,” Mr Dorsey wrote on his social network Nostr. “Getting calls. Heartbreaking. Bob was instrumental to Square and Cash App. STL guy,” he wrote, in an apparent reference to Mr Lee’s hometown of St Louis.
MobileCoin CEO Joshua Goldbard wrote that Mr Lee was an “incredible human being”.
“Bob was so much more than a technologist. Bob was an artist. Everywhere he went Bob breathed love into this world. He had so much deep heartfelt love. Traveling with Bob was like seeing the world for the first time,” Mr Goldbard wrote.
“As a lifelong Bay Area resident I have more questions than answers tonight. I don’t know how to fix what’s wrong, but I know something isn’t working in our grey city,” he added.
Tributes poured in for the slain tech founder on social media.
“He was a generous decent human being who didn’t deserve to be killed,” Bill Barhydt, CEO of Abra, posted on Twitter.
“So sad to hear of @crazybob’s untimely passing,” Figma CEO Dylan Field wrote on Twitter. “I first met him in summer 2006 — he didn’t care that I was only 14 and we talked tech / geeked out about programming. We remained connected over the years and he was an early supporter of Figma. It’s so hard to believe he is gone.”
On the San Francisco Reddit forum, friends and acquaintances of Mr Lee expressed frustration at “all the needless violence in SF”.
“Something seriously needs to change in this city,” one wrote.
Crime in San Francisco
San Francisco is often portrayed as a lawless city where drug use and homelessness have fueled a surge in violent crime and robberies.
That narrative led in part to former District Attorney Chesa Boudin being ousted in a recall election in June last year, after he sought to eliminate cash bail and reduce the prison population.
Ms Jenkins took over as District Attorney on a platform of balancing criminal justice reform while making stiffer penalties for violent offenders, and won re-election last November,
She did not immediately respond to a request by The Independent for comment about Mr Lee’s murder.
Figures from the San Francisco Police Department’s crime reports show the situation is more complicated than often portrayed.
While some violent crime began increasing during the pandemic, rates were still much lower than in previous years.
In 2022, homicide rates remained flat at 55, exactly the same number as the previous year. Homicides hit a 56-year low in the city in 2019, when 41 people were killed in the city.
There have been 12 homicides in the city so far in 2023, preliminary data shows.
Aggravated assault, robbery and rape increased in 2022, but was still much lower than in 2016, 2017 and 2018, according to San Francisco crime statistics.
