旧金山District Attorney Brooke Jenkins slammed Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Thursday for leaping to conclusions about the killing of Cash App founder Bob Lee, contributing to what she described as a fog of misinformation about the case that hampered the investigation.
杰西卡基督教编年史旧金山District Attorney Brooke JenkinsslammedTwitter CEO Elon Muskat a press conference Thursday aboutthe slaying of tech executive Bob Lee, saying Musk’s “reckless and irresponsible” tweets about the killing contributed to a dangerous fog of misinformation surrounding the case.
Jenkins and other city leaders announced thatNima Momeni— an IT entrepreneur — was arrested Thursday morning on suspicion of stabbing Lee to death last week.
Despite a lack of publicly available information about the case in the run-up to Momeni’s arrest, prominent tech-industry figures — with Musk chief among them — seized on Lee’s death as illustrative of lawlessness and unchecked crime in San Francisco.
Lee, the founder of Cash App, was stabbed to death in the early morning hours of April 4 in San Francisco’s Rincon Hill neighborhood. Within hours of the attack, with no information other than the fact he had been stabbed, Musk and other tech giants began pointing fingers at the city, and at Jenkins directly.
“Violent crime in SF is horrific and even if attackers are caught, they are often released immediately,” Musk wrote on April 4. “Is the city taking stronger action to incarcerate repeat violent offenders @BrookeJenkinsSF?” Musk has nearly 135 million Twitter followers.
At Thursday’s press conference, Jenkins and San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott underscored that the premature statements made by leaders like Musk posed a real threat to the pursuit of justice in the case.
执法官员“昼夜不停的工作” to battle a misinformed narrative about the city before they identified Momeni as the suspect in the killing. Momeni listed himself as the founder of an IT consulting company, according to his LinkedIn page.
“Statements like those contained in Mr. Musk’s tweet that assumed incorrect circumstances about Mr. Lee’s death serve to mislead the world in their perceptions of San Francisco,” said Jenkins. “It spreads misinformation at a time when the police are trying to solve a very difficult case.”
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Officials gave scant details about their investigation Thursday, saying only that Momeni — an Emeryville resident — would be charged with one count of murder, with a special enhancement due to his use of a knife to carry out the killing.
He will be arraigned Friday afternoon in San Francisco Superior Court.
Scott declined to answer questions about the nature of the relationship between the two men.
But officials did underscore their frustrations about how the incident had been co-opted to confirm residents’ fears about random violence in San Francisco, when in fact, they say —and a Chronicle investigation confirmed— violent crime rates in the city declined during the pandemic and remain lower than at any point since 1985.
Research has also shown that most people who commit homicides know the people they kill, according to FBI data.
“This is not about San Francisco,” said Scott. “It happened in San Francisco and that is unfortunate. It’s even more a tragedy that it happened at all. But this speaks to more about human nature.”
Reach Annie Vainshtein:avainshtein@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @annievain
