Tech executive found guilty for murder of Cash App founder Bob Lee
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(SAN FRANCISCO) — A fellow tech executive was found guilty in a San Francisco courtroom on Tuesday for the murder of Cash App founder Bob Lee.
Prosecutors said Nima Momeni stabbed Lee three times with a kitchen knife after driving him to a secluded area in April 2023.
Defense attorneys for Momeni previously said he acted in self defense in response to an attempted assault by an intoxicated Lee. Momeni had pleaded not guilty.
Lee, a former executive at cryptocurrency firm MobileCoin, was killed in the early morning hours on April 4, 2023, in the San Francisco neighborhood of Rincon Hill, according to police.
At about 2 a.m., camera footage showed Lee and Momeni leaving Lee’s hotel and getting into Momeni’s car, a BMW Z4, prosecutors said in a court filing.
Video shows the BMW drive to a secluded and dark area where the two men got out of the car. Momeni “moved toward” Lee and the BMW drove away from the scene at high speed, according to the court document.
Prosecutors have alleged that Momeni killed Lee over the alleged sexual assault of Momeni’s sister by an acquaintance of Lee.
Paula Canny, the defense attorney for Momeni, said at a hearing in May that Lee’s death arose from a mix of self-defense and accidental harm.
“There was no premeditation,” Canny said.
On the witness stand last month, Momeni said Lee had attacked him in a fit of anger touched off by a joke. Momeni had teased Lee, saying that he would rather spend his last night in town with his family than going to a strip club, where the two were possibly headed, Momeni recounted.
In the scuffle that ensued, Momeni did not realize that Lee had been fatally injured, said Momeni, the owner of an Emeryville, California-based company called Expand IT.
(NEWCASTLE, MAINE) — President Joe Biden will sign a proclamation on Monday to establish the Frances Perkins National Monument in Newcastle, Maine.
The location will “honor the historic contributions of America’s first woman Cabinet Secretary, the longest-serving Secretary of Labor, and the driving force behind the New Deal,” according to the White House.
Perkins served as labor secretary for 12 years under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
During that time, she “helped create Social Security; helped millions of Americans get back to work during the Great Depression; fought for the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively; and established the minimum wage, overtime pay, prohibitions on child labor, and unemployment insurance,” according to the fact sheet.
Perkins also created the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal program that provided conservation and development jobs for manual laborers on government-owned rural land, according to Roosevelt presidential library.
Biden has dubbed himself the most pro-union president in American history. In 2023, he made the historic move of joining auto workers on the picket line.
The Perkins Family Home, built in 1837 and known as the “Brick House,” will be the centerpiece of the new monument, according to the White House.
“Designated a National Historic Landmark in 2014, the Perkins Homestead is a 57-acre property along the Damariscotta River that supported the family for generations,” the White House said. “Visitors experience the same landscape, garden paths and wooded walking trails that were a lifelong source of inspiration and rejuvenation for Perkins.”
In addition to this monument, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland will also announce five other monuments across the nation that will “increase the representation of women’s history in historic sites across America,” according to the White House.
(BELLEVUE, Wash.) — Two people have been killed by falling trees in Washington state as a powerful storm hits the Pacific Northwest.
In Bellevue, a tree fell into a home, hitting and killing a woman while she was in the shower Tuesday night, Bellevue fire officials said.
In Lynwood, a woman in her 50s was killed when a tree fell on a homeless encampment, officials said.
More than 500,000 customers are without power in Washington state on Wednesday.
The storm exploded into a bomb cyclone off the coast, near Vancouver Island, Canada, where winds gusted near 101 mph.
A bomb cyclone means the pressure in the center of the storm drops 24 millibars within 24 hours.
Wind gusts reached 50 to 84 mph from Northern California to Washington.
As the storm sits and spins over the ocean this week, it will help to push a plume of Pacific moisture called an atmospheric river into Oregon and Northern California.
Alerts are in effect through Friday for flooding, snow, avalanches and high winds.
Some places could see more than 1 foot of rain this week. A flood watch has been issued in Northern California.
(NEW YORK) — Nearly four years after he allegedly shot and killed an unarmed Black man who was dropping off Christmas money to a friend, the murder trial of former police officer Adam Coy was getting underway on Monday.
Coy, who is white, was fired from the Columbus Police Department about a week after the 2020 fatal shooting of 47-year-old Andre Hill.
About a month after the shooting, the 46-year-old Coy was arrested and indicted on charges of murder, reckless homicide, felonious assault and two counts of dereliction of duty. Coy has pleaded not guilty to the charges. He has not made any public comments on the case.
If convicted, Coy, who is free on $1 million bail, could face a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The trial was scheduled to begin Monday in Franklin County Court of Common Pleas in Columbus with the start of jury selection.
Opening statements in the long-awaited trial, which was postponed indefinitely in April 2023 after Coy was diagnosed with cancer and underwent treatment, could get underway as early as Tuesday.
The shooting unfolded around 2 a.m. on Dec. 22, 2020, when Coy and another officer, Amy Detweiler, were called to a home in the Northwest Side neighborhood of Columbus to investigate a nonemergency noise complaint from a neighbor reporting a man sitting for a prolonged amount of time in an SUV outside the residence with the engine running, according to police officials and prosecutors.
Coy allegedly drew his gun and shined a flashlight into the open garage as Hill emerged from the garage holding a cellphone, according to police body camera footage released by the Columbus Police Department.
An autopsy determined that Hill was shot four times, suffering wounds to his chest and legs.
Neither Coy nor Detweiler turned their body-worn cameras on until after the shooting, but Coy’s camera had a “look-back” function that automatically activated and recorded 60 seconds of the episode without sound, including capturing the shooting.
The body camera footage also showed that as Hill lay dying on the floor of the garage, none of the officers who responded to the incident immediately provided first aid.
National civil rights attorney, Benjamin Crump, who is representing Hill’s family, alleged that the officers waited up to 15 minutes before before they started giving Hill first aid.
After officers on the scene turned their body cameras on, a woman came out of the house and told officers that Hill was a guest.
“He was bringing me Christmas money. He didn’t do anything,” she was heard telling the officers, who ordered her back inside.
Officer Detweiler, who is expected to testify in Coy’s trial, told investigators that before the shooting she and Coy were standing outside the house attempting to determine why Hill was at the location, according to records in the case released to the public on Dec. 29, 2020. Detweiler told investigators, according to the records, that she and Coy had their weapons drawn when Hill emerged from the garage, but that Hill did not appear to pose any threat before he was shot.
“Officer Detweiler stated Mr. Hill was walking towards her with a cell phone raised in his left hand,” according to the investigation records. “Officer Detweiler stated she did not observe any threats from Mr. Hill.”
Detweiler told investigators that Hill didn’t say a word as he approached her and Coy. She told investigators that Coy suddenly yelled out, “There’s a gun in his other hands, there’s a gun in his other hand” before opening fire, according to investigators.
Detweiler said she did not see a weapon in Hill’s hands and no firearms were found in Hill’s possession after the shooting, according to records.
Coy told investigators he thought he saw a firearm on Hill before shooting the man, officials said.
As protesters took to the streets of Columbus in the days following the shooting demanding Coy be fired and charged with murder, Columbus Public Safety Director Ned Pettus Jr. announced he had terminated Coy, a 19-year veteran of the police force, writing in his ruling that “known facts do not establish that this use of deadly force was objectively reasonable.”
Pettus found that Coy didn’t try to deescalate the situation before shooting Hill. After the shooting, Coy didn’t render aid or ensure that others did, according to Pettus.
The dereliction of duty charges Coy is facing at trial stems from him not turning on his body camera before the shooting and not warning Detweiler of the potential danger he believed Hill posed, prosecutors said.
After Coy was indicted, his attorney, Mark Collins, told ABC Columbus affiliate WSYX-TV that the charges against Coy, particularly the murder charge, did not make sense, saying it suggests his client knowingly intended to kill Hill.
“The knowing element, to cause serious physical harm with a deadly weapon, and someone died, that’s the concept, however, police officers are trained a certain way to take an action and to stop a threat,” Collins said at the time. “So that kind of doesn’t make sense.”
In May 2021, the City of Columbus agreed to a $10 million wrongful death settlement with Hill’s family, the highest amount ever paid by the city.
The indictment of Coy came just days after the Columbus City Council also passed Andre’s Law, which was named after Hill and requires Columbus police officers to turn on their body cameras when responding to calls and to immediately render first aid after a use-of-force incident.
