The British tabloid the Daily Mail has gotten ahold of the surveillance video from the Portside condominium building, outside of which CashApp founder and crypto exec Bob Lee was frantically trying to find help after being brutally stabbed early Tuesday morning.
"The brutal killing in former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's staunchly Democrat electoral district has ignited concern over public safety and soaring homelessness in San Francisco," proclaims the Daily Mail.
"'It's too liberal. Too much. And we're paying for it," says an anonymous SF resident whom the tabloid quotes.
The Daily Mail has one detail about the killing that we had not heard before, which has not been confirmed by police: A kitchen knife with a four-inch blade was found in a parking lot across the street from where Lee was found.
If you want to watch the surveillance footage — warning, it is disturbing — you can do so here. We won't be embedding it out of respect for Lee's family.
As described in recent days in multiple news outlets, the footage — which is surveillance footage from both inside and outside the lobby of the Portside II condominiums, on Main Street. Lee can be seen stumbling up to the windows of the unmanned lobby, apparently seeking help after being stabbed in the chest multiple times. He falls to the ground, gets up, stumbles, falls again.
The footage also appears to show Lee flagging down a car, which stops but then speeds off.
Lee called 911 from his cellphone, and as KRON4 reported, he said, "Help! Someone stabbed me!" to the dispatcher.
It's not clear where Lee was coming from or headed to at 2:30 a.m. Tuesday, and District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has tried to temper the outcries about the case, given what little is known. Those outcries included a tweet on Tuesday from Elon Musk declaring, once again, that San Francisco is a shithole and he's known "many" people who have been "severely assaulted" in the city, and that criminals aren't being held accountable.
"In response to Elon’s tweet, I want to make sure people don’t draw assumptions about this case," Jenkins tells KRON4. "None of us know the circumstances of what caused this murder."
Jenkins added, "Anyone who is a violent or repeat offender, we need to be making sure that we are making public safety-based arguments in court to make sure they are kept off our street."
No arrests have been made in the case. And it goes without saying that even if the statistics don't back up what Musk said, or what the Daily Mail says, this is another high-profile case that will likely impact public perception about SF crime for years to come.
Previously: Cash App Founder and Square Exec Bob Lee Identified as Victim In Rincon Hill Stabbing