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An IT consultant accused of stabbing CashApp founder Bob Lee to death in San Francisco is now on suicide watch in the city’s jail, his lawyer said.
Paula Canny, the attorney representing suspect Nima Momeni, 38, said: ‘As is standard process in high-profile cases in San Francisco, the jail always treats it as a high-risk suicide (watch).’
Speaking to the New York Post, Canny also confirmed Lee knew Momeni’s glamorous sister Khazar Elyassnia – and was closer to her than he was to Momeni himself.
Nima Momeni is on suicide watch at San Francisco County Jail after he was charged with murdering CashApp founder Bob Lee, his lawyer Paula Canny says
Canny, pictured, says Lee and Momeni were not good friends – and that the murdered tycoon was much closer to Momeni’s sister Khazar Elyassnia
Canny claimed that Lee and Khazar were good friends, and that Momeni had only met Lee through his sibling.
She said: ‘Bob Lee and his sister definitely knew each other.
‘There’s a group of well-to-do young people who liked to party.’
Lee was stabbed in the heart three times on April 4 after fighting with Momeni about Khazar, prosecutors say.
Distressing video footage first obtained by DailyMail.com showed Lee stumbling through the streets of downtown San Francisco before collapsing and dying of his wounds.
The suspected murderer is said to have been grilling Lee about whether Khazar had been ‘doing drugs or anything inappropriate.’
Khazar is married to Dr. Dino Elyassnia, one of San Francisco’s top plastic surgeons.
An unnamed witness who said he’d been friends with Bob for 10 years told police that he believed Lee and Khazar were having an intimate relationship and that her marriage might have been in ‘jeopardy.’
At 2.03am, Lee and Nima left the apartment building and got into Nima’s BMW, who’d offered to drive him to his hotel.
Instead, prosecutors say he took him to a shady downtown street, where he stabbed him three times including once in the heart, and fled.
Both he and Khazar lived in Mill Valley, an exclusive San Francisco suburb, before Lee moved to Miami in October last year.
In a text message to Lee earlier in the day, she gushed: ‘Just wanted to make sure your doing OK because I know Nima came wayyy down hard on you and thank you for being such a classy man handling it with class.
‘Love you Selfish pr***s.’
Khazar and her husband, plastic surgeon Dr. Dino Elyassnia Friday at her brother’s arraignment. Prosecutors laid out part of their case on Friday and she is at the center of her brother’s alleged motive
The founder of Cash App, 43-year-old Bob Lee was stabbed to death on April 4. News that Momeni knew Lee surprised many who had assumed the millionaire’s murderer was a vagrant, given the city’s crime situation
Momeni depicted in a court sketch Friday. His sister was in the courtroom to support him. The pair immigrated to the US from Iran as children
On April 4, Lee was filmed on surveillance cameras staggering into an apartment building in downtown San Francisco at 2.35am after being stabbed. Yesterday, police searched the nearby apartment of Momeni’s sister, Khazar. It’s unclear if they’d been together or at the apartment earlier in the night
The arrest happened nine days after Lee’s April 4 stabbing sent shockwaves throughout the Bay Area
Canny said that Momeni’s family had been ‘deeply impacted’ by his arrest for Lee’s murder, and that the murder suspect’s mom is ‘heartbroken’ by the shame wrought on her family.
The lawyer also said that she has yet to see evidence linking her client to the killing.
She told the Post: ‘He was with Bob Lee at a time that night, but the prosecutors are saying he was with Bob Lee when he was killed.
‘I’m like, “OK, show me that evidence please.”
‘Even though they made this quick arrest, I don’t have any of the supporting documents that go with the arrest warrant.
‘The police aren’t saying what happened.’
Momeni is due back in court for his arraignment April 25.
On Friday, Canny claimed that there is much more to this story that meets the eye.
‘There’s so much more to this – and a much greater backstory than what has been disclosed at all in the government’s pleading,’ she said.
She warned that the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office ‘seem to think they have enough to make an arrest, but I haven’t seen it.’
‘So, until I see it and analyze it, I’m gonna say they’ve made a mistake,’ she added. ‘There isn’t enough [to hold him].’
Filed by district attorneys working under Mayor London Breed, a detention motion released Friday laid bare how prosecutors believe Momeni stabbed the millionaire with a kitchen knife in an attack they described as ‘planned’ and ‘deliberate.’
Seemingly undeterred by the city’s argument – which alleged Momeni drove Lee to a ‘secluded area’ before stabbing the morning of April 4 – Canny added that such motions are generally ‘not considered admissible’ due to them not naming sources.
