Money App founder Bob Lee seemed to be snorting cocaine off a knife blade simply hours earlier than he was stabbed to demise, explosive footage revealed for the primary time by his accused killer’s protection throughout their closing statements confirmed.
“That’s the knife,” Nima Momeni’s protection lawyer Saam Zangeneh instructed jurors in a San Francisco courtroom Tuesday as footage taken simply hours earlier than Lee, 43, was stabbed to demise on April 3, 2023, was performed, Mission Native reported.
The footage confirmed Lee standing together with his good friend Bo Mohazzabi outdoors a membership the place they’d been consuming that evening. Each then bent over and appeared to snort one thing off a pointed, shining object Lee held in his hand. Lee then dug with the item in what seemed to be a small bag and lifted it to his nostril.
“Take a look at the scale. Take a look at the scale. What else might that be?” Zangeneh requested jurors, elevating a cutout of the three.5-inch blade that matched the knife Lee was killed with.
“So long as we now have an affordable idea, it’s a must to discover him not responsible,” the lawyer mentioned. “Except they may present that our idea is just not affordable, then he’s not responsible.”
The footage might upend prosecutors’ argument that Momeni was the one who introduced a knife alongside when he and Lee drove off collectively later that fateful evening.
Separate footage of the pair leaving the condominium of Momeni’s sister Khazar Elyassnia, 38, earlier than the stabbing has been central to the case, and prosecutors argued that it confirmed Lee had no blade on him earlier than the stabbing.
Prosecutors have argued Momeni stabbed Lee to demise in a rage over his sister — who Lee was reportedly having an affair with — and had allegedly been sexually assaulted by drug vendor Lee launched her to.
However Momeni’s attorneys claimed a closely inebriated Lee was the aggressor, and that he sprang at Momeni with the knife over a joke about going to strip golf equipment quite than spending time with household. They mentioned Momeni was merely defending himself, and that Lee was fatally stabbed as they fought over the blade.
A knife that was taken from the kitchen of Momeni’s sister was discovered on the scene of the stabbing.
Throughout a rebuttal to Zangeneh’s closing, prosecutor Omid Talai solid doubt on whether or not the item Lee held within the video was even a knife, and instructed jurors the science nonetheless backed that Momeni was the killer — citing forensics discovering 99% of DNA discovered on the deal with of the knife that killed Lee got here from Momeni, whereas 98% of DNA on the blade got here from Lee.
“Ought to we imagine the protection lawyer,” Talai mentioned, in keeping with Mission Native. “Or do you have to imagine science and DNA?”
However the brand new footage additionally appeared to undercut the testimony of Mohazzabi, who instructed jurors that he’d overheard Momeni being “aggressive” throughout a telephone name with Lee about his sister that evening — but in addition that he didn’t bear in mind doing any medication with Lee or seeing him do any that evening.
It was simply the newest twist in a case that has despatched shockwaves by means of the San Francisco tech world, which remembered Lee as a well-loved, hardworking innovator after his demise.
However the case uncovered a seedier underbelly of the well-heeled neighborhood, with a social scene dominated by swinging intercourse events and drug-fueled benders taking heart stage.
Jury deliberations are attributable to begin on Wednesday.
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