Bob Lee, the billion-dollar founder of Cash App, was fatally stabbed on Tuesday close to San Francisco’s central business district, according to his family.
A 43-year-old guy was discovered by police with stab wounds; after being treated, he subsequently passed away in the hospital.
His father, Rick Lee, who was also the former chief technology officer of Square, confirmed his son’s death.
Officials in San Francisco have come under fire for how they handled a recent spike in violent crime.
According to the most recent crime statistics, the city is among the most hazardous in the Nation.
“My best friend died,”
Around 02:35 local time on Tuesday, police officers reacted to reports of the stabbing (10:35 BST).
The San Francisco Standard has seen surveillance footage that appears to show Mr. Lee wandering down a deserted alleyway in search of assistance.
In order to disclose his wound, Mr. Lee is seen stumbling towards a parked car and tugging off his shirt, but the car speeds away before the tech mogul hits the ground.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, police discovered Mr. Lee unconscious and suffering from two stab wounds to his chest in the Rincon Hill neighbourhood. They began first aiding him before taking him to the hospital.
“I just lost my best friend, my son Bob Lee when he lost his life on the street in San Francisco early Tuesday morning,” Mr. Lee’s father wrote in a message posted on Facebook on Wednesday.
According to CBS News, a US partner of the BBC, Mr. Lee was a Miami, Florida resident who was visiting San Francisco for a leadership meeting and staying on to see friends.
Mr. Lee’s brother Tim Oliver Lee also made the following Facebook post: “He was actually the best among us. He was my childhood best friend, and I feel like a part of me has been lost.”
Mr. Lee was serving as MobileCoin’s chief product officer at the time of his death.
The CEO of the cryptocurrency business Abra, Bill Barhydt, noted on Twitter that Mr Lee was also a parent and that he “didn’t deserve to be slain.”
According to Forbes, Cash App, a smartphone-based payment service that enables person-to-person money transactions, is now valued at $40 billion (£32 billion).
Its user base has grown rapidly since its introduction in 2013, reaching seven million monthly active users in 2017 and rising to 30 million in 2020.
Since Mr. Lee’s passing, the violent crime in the Californian city has come under fresh fire.
Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and the CEO of Twitter, responded to tributes to Mr. Lee by claiming that violent crime in [San Francisco] is horrifying and that attackers are frequently freed right away even if they are captured.
According to data from 2021, the city is more unsafe than 98% of US communities, with people having a 1-in-16 risk of becoming a victim of violent or property crime each year, according to the Hoover Institution, a policy research think tank.
Since the epidemic, homicides have been a particular problem in San Francisco.
In 2021 and 2022, there were 56 homicides in the city. According to early police data, 12 homicides have been reported in San Francisco so far this year.
In this case, San Francisco police have not yet named a suspect, and the investigation is still underway.
The district attorney for San Francisco, Brooke Jenkins, tweeted a tip line number with the message “we do not accept these awful acts of violence in San Francisco.”
The killing of Bob Lee is “a sad tragedy,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed stated in a statement, assuring the public that the city is “prioritising public safety.”
