Cash App founder and former Square Chief Technology Officer Bob Lee was fatally stabbed in San Francisco on Tuesday morning in the Rincon Hill neighborhood near the city’s Bay Bridge, NBC Bay Area reports.
Officers received reports of a stabbing in the 300 block of Main Street and arrived at the scene around 2:35 a.m., they said in a statement Tuesday. They found 43-year-old Lee, who was rushed to a hospital but later died.
The area is home to the headquarters of The Gap and DocuSign, the San Francisco offices of Google, Mozilla and accounting giant PriceWaterhouseCoopers, as well as a large number of luxury condominiums and apartment buildings, among others. It is part of a 67-block area known as the East Cut Community Benefit District, which does have private security patrols funded by local taxpayers, SFGate reported, but the guards were not close at the time of the stabbing.
Though the city’s medical examiner’s office has yet to confirm the victim was Lee, friends and co-workers of his told CBS affiliate KPIX that it was him. He had reportedly been visiting from Miami for a leadership summit last week at MobileCoin, where he had been the Chief Product Officer, and had remained in the city to see friends after his meetings concluded.
MobileCoin confirmed on Wednesday that it was Lee who had died in the attack.
“Bob was a force of nature,” MobileCoin CEO Joshua Goldbard said in a statement to KPIX. “He helped to birth Android and CashApp into our world. Moby was his dream: a privacy protecting wallet for the 21st century. I will miss him every day.”
Lee joined MobileCoin 2021, but had previously worked as chief technology officer of Square (now Block), a payment company based in San Francisco. He also had a role as a start-up adviser, investing in companies such as SpaceX and Clubhouse.
Upon the news of Lee’s death, Elon Musk immediately took to his own platform, Twitter, to criticize the city’s response to violent crime.
“Violent crime in SF is horrific and even if attackers are caught, they are often released immediately,” Musk said in a reply to mixed martial artist Jake Shields, who had previously tweeted “Fuck San Francisco” upon hearing the news of Lee’s death. Musk currently makes his home in Texas, according to CBS News.
Musk also tagged San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins in his tweet, questioning whether the city had plans to “incarcerate repeat violent offenders.” Neither police or prosecutors have confirmed the identity of any suspect, let alone whether the suspect fits Musk’s description.
Jenkins later issued a separate statement of her own regarding the stabbing.
“I want to extend my sincerest condolences to Mr. Lee’s family members & loved ones for his loss. We do not tolerate these horrific acts of violence in San Francisco,” she Tweeted. “At this time no arrests have been made. Anyone w/ information is asked to call @SFPD Tip Line at 1-415-575-4444.”
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