Closing arguments began Monday in the trial of a 2023 tech consultant death by stabbing An event that shocked the broader tech community as San Francisco-based Cash App founder Bob Lee mourned the loss of an entrepreneur his peers called charismatic and kind.
According to San Francisco prosecutors, Nima Momeni stabbed Lee three times after hearing that Lee’s drug dealer friend drugged Momeni’s younger sister with GHB and other drugs and sexually assaulted her.
“A person called 911 for help saying someone stabbed me,” Assistant District Attorney Dane Reinstedt said, adding that the other person never called police or told anyone about what happened that night until the trial.
Defense lawyers will make their final arguments on Tuesday in the trial that started on October 14. The prosecutor will then have the opportunity to respond to the defense’s closing statement.
Defense lawyers say Lee, 43, had been taking cocaine and the addictive drug ketamine for days, which made him agitated and violent, and that he attacked the defendant with a knife. Momeni was said to have been forced to use her Krav Maga martial arts skills in the early hours of April 4, 2023, ” bad joke ″ that upset Lee, and he didn’t realize he’d stabbed him.
Momeni faces 26 years to life if convicted of murder. He has pleaded not guilty in a case so high-profile that San Francisco prosecutor Brooke Jenkins entered the room Monday for part of the closing.
The trial has been emotionally difficult for the families of both men. Mahnaz Tayarani, the accused’s mother, sits on one side of the courtroom with Lee’s father, brother and ex-wife on the other.
Prosecutors began their closing arguments Monday with a 911 call in which Lee could be heard repeatedly calling for help. Lee’s ex-wife, Krista Lee, cradled their daughter Scout as the 16-year-old cried on her mother’s shoulder. They left the room. The Lees have two children.
Reinstedt on Monday mocked Momeni’s defense as he went through the week’s evidence to jurors.
He said Momeni was angry with Lee for introducing Khazar Momeni, with whom he was friends, a drug dealer known as GHB. a date-rape drughours before the stabbing. They say Momeni grilled Lee earlier in the evening about what happened at the drug dealer’s apartment and sent her text messages calling the two men stalkers and sex predators.
Momeni then met Lee at her sister’s apartment, grabbed a kitchen knife from her, took Lee to a secluded area near the Bay Bridge and stabbed her three times, Reinstedt said.
“That protection of the defendant’s little sister is what led to all of this,” Reinstedt said.
Surveillance video shows the two men elegant apartment Khazar Momeni’s around 2:00 and get into Momeni’s BMW. Other surveillance then shows him getting out of the car in an isolated part of the city near the Bay Bridge.
Momeni testified that he stopped the car after it drove over a pothole that caused Lee’s beer to spill. Momeni said he made a joke at the time, suggesting that Lee should spend his last night exploring the city instead of trying to find a strip club to keep the party going.
Lee then suddenly pulled a knife from his jacket pocket, Momeni said. He said Lee later left, showing no signs of injury.
“I was afraid for my life,” Momeni said in earlier testimony assertive and conflicted.
Reinstedt said Momeni’s story made no sense given Lee’s peaceful nature. Momeni never called the police to report Lee’s alleged assault or even after learning that she had last seen Lee stabbed to death in the street.
Prosecutors said the wounds were clean, clear and deep, and were not the result of any self-defense. Almost all the DNA found on the handle of the knife – 99% – belonged to Momeni, the prosecutor said.
The video of the two men near the bridge is grainy, but Reinstedt said it clearly showed the image of Momeni repeatedly confronting Lee. There was no deflected and redirected knife in Lee’s hands, he said.
Reinstedt also showed video of Momeni and Lee leaving the apartment, shaking Lee’s jacket to show there was no knife hidden inside.
Lee was found stunned on an empty street in downtown San Francisco at 2:30 a.m., bleeding a trail of blood and crying for help. He later died in a hospital.
Lee’s death stunned him technology community as fellow executives and engineers paid tribute to his generosity and brilliance. He was chief product officer of the cryptocurrency platform MobileCoin at the time of his death.
