Bob Lee, the billion-dollar creator of Cash App, was fatally stabbed on Tuesday close to San Francisco’s central business district, according to his family.
A 43-year-old man was discovered by police with stab wounds; after being treated, he eventually passed away in the hospital.
His father, Rick Lee, who was also the former chief technology officer at Square, verified his son’s death.
Officials in San Francisco have come under fire for how they handled a recent spike in violent crime.
The metropolis is one of the most dangerous in the US, according to the most recent crime statistics.
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 video that appears to show Mr. Lee walking down a deserted alleyway in search of assistance.
In order to expose his wound, Mr. Lee is seen stumbling toward a parked car and lifting up his shirt, but the car drives away before the tech entrepreneur hits the ground.
“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 summit and staying on to see pals.
Brother of Mr. Lee Tim Oliver Lee also shared this on Facebook: “He really was the finest of us. He was my childhood best friend, and I feel like a portion of me has been lost.
Mr. Lee was serving as MobileCoin’s chief product officer at the time of his passing.
The CEO of the cryptocurrency firm Abra, Bill Barhydt, noted on Twitter that Mr. Lee was also a father and that he “didn’t deserve to be killed.”
According to Forbes, Cash software, a smartphone-based payment software that enables person-to-person money transfers, is now valued at $40 billion (£32 billion).
Its user base has grown rapidly since its debut in 2013, reaching seven million monthly active users in 2017 and rising to 30 million in 2020.
After Mr. Lee’s passing, the violent crime in the Californian metropolis has come under fresh criticism.
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 released right away even if they are captured.
According to data from 2021, the city is more dangerous than 98% of US cities, with residents having a 1-in-16 chance of becoming a victim of violent or property crime each year, according to the Hoover Institution, a policy research think firm.
Since the pandemic, homicides have been a special problem in San Francisco.
In 2021 and 2022, there were 56 homicides in the city. According to early police statistics, 12 homicides have been reported in San Francisco so far this year.
In this instance, San Francisco police have not yet named a suspect, and the investigation is still ongoing.
The district attorney for San Francisco, Brooke Jenkins, tweeted a tip line number with the message “we do not tolerate these horrific acts of violence in San Francisco.”
The killing of Bob Lee is “a horrible tragedy,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed said in a statement, assuring the public that the city is “prioritizing public safety.”
