A video reveals Bob Lee, the Cash App founder, dying after being stabbed on the street in San Francisco, and spectators who watched from inside a vehicle simply ignored his pleas for help and drove away.
According to security footage obtained by the San Francisco Standard, the 43-year-old MobileCoin chief product officer walked up to a parked automobile with its hazard flashers on before succumbing to his injuries.
Lee was seen lifting his shirt to show the driver his two stab wounds but fell to the ground as the car drove away.
At a little after 2:30 in the morning, Lee dialed 911 and begged for assistance, yelling to dispatchers that he had been stabbed and needed to get to a hospital. “Help!” he screamed into his phone. “Someone stabbed me.”
Less than six minutes later, police arrived and discovered Lee unresponsive with two stab wounds to the chest.
He was transported to San Francisco General Hospital where he died. As of Thursday morning, police have made no arrests or named any suspects in the attack.
VISIT OUR YOUTUBE CHANNELAccording to the Standard, the savage fatal stabbing in the city’s downtown Rincon Hill neighborhood, a well-to-do enclave in former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s district, left a trail of blood along the pavement outside the building where Lee collapsed.
The police have not stated if the stabbing was random or planned.
During a meeting of the Police Commission on Wednesday, San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott stated that he had “nothing to share yet.”
“We don’t want to be premature and definitely we don’t have to speculate so we are going to be thoughtful about following the evidence and we’ll put out what we’ll put out as soon as we can,” Scott declared.
Lee, a father of two and longtime Bay Area resident, had recently relocated to Miami because he believed San Francisco was “deteriorating,” according to his friend Jake Shields.
Shields revealed that Lee was attacked while walking.
Shield tweeted, “He was in the ‘good’ part of the city and appeared to have been targeted in a random mugging/attack.”
His death triggered outcry in the tech industry, prompting titans like Elon Musk to voice concern about the city’s public safety.
“Many people I know have been severely assaulted,” Musk tweeted. “Violent crime in SF is horrific and even if attackers are caught, they are often released immediately.”
Musk also inquired with San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins about the city’s “stronger action to incarcerate repeat offenders.”
Lee has been the chief product officer of MobileCoin, a cryptocurrency firm based in San Francisco, since November 2021.
From the SF Standard:
The stabbing stunned those who say the neighborhood, which is also called the East Cut, isn’t dangerous.
“Both the reality and the feel of the neighborhood is the East Cut is very safe,” said Andrew Robinson, who heads the East Cut Community Benefit District. “So the shock and the unease for people is pretty significant.”
Lee, who was a father and a longtime member of the Bay Area software development community, had recently moved to Miami. Back in 2011, he became Square’s first CTO and was the developer of its Cash App (formerly called Square Cash). In 2021, Lee became the chief product officer of MobileCoin, a crypto payment company based in San Francisco.
Lee’s father, Rick Lee, eulogized his son on Facebook on Wednesday, saying, “I just lost my best friend” and “Bobby worked harder than anyone and was the smartest person I have ever known.”
