Nearly a month into his trial for allegedly killing Cash App founder Bob Lee, Nima Momeni took the witness stand for the first time to describe the stabbing, which he said began after Lee attacked him over a “bad joke.”
Jurors today got to hear Momeni, who has been sitting quietly in the courtroom through weeks of testimony, speak about what led him to stab Lee three times in the early morning hours of April 4, 2023. Momeni has been accused of murder, but his attorneys have claimed self-defense.
Momeni wore a navy blue suit, spoke with a light Iranian accent, and appeared nervous: He repeatedly cut off attorneys asking him questions and refilled his cup of water several times, prompting Judge Alexandra Gordon to at one point give Momeni a framed “Inhale, Exhale” mini-poster from her bench.
Momeni said today that Lee suddenly attacked him after Momeni made a joke that Lee should be with his family instead of spending time in strip clubs, which they were discussing doing.
“If it was my last night in town, I’d go and hang out with my family instead of, you know, fucking around in strip clubs,” Momeni said he told Lee that night.
Lee, whose ex-wife and two children live in the Bay Area, was in San Francisco for a few days and was expecting to return to his home in Miami the next day, according to witness testimony from his friend. Momeni and Lee had just met days earlier.
“How did he react?” asked defense attorney Saam Zanganeh.
“Not good at all, it just set him off,” Momeni replied. Lee became hostile then attacked Momeni over the comment, he said on the stand, swearing at him and drawing a knife from his pocket.
“I was in fear for my life,” Momeni said. He said he deflected the attack by pinning Lee’s hand to his chest. He said he had no idea Lee was injured, much less dead, until days later.
The incident
Around 2 a.m. on April 4, 2023, Momeni and Lee were seen on surveillance cameras leaving the Millennium Tower home of Momeni’s sister, Khazar, who was Lee’s friend and who has played a central role in the trial. Text messages from that night suggest Lee and Momeni had some disagreement, which prosecutors say drove Momeni to stab Lee.
Momeni today said he and Lee sat in his white BMW for a while trying to figure out what to do, and he just began driving.
During the drive, he said, Lee spilled his drink as they went over a pothole, so he pulled over. Lee dried off, then discovered whippits — nitrous oxide — that Momeni’s sister had left in the car.
Momeni: He just took a bunch of the whippit stuff, the canisters?
Zangeneh: After he did that, what was his reaction?
Momeni: He was being silly, chatty, just made a bunch of weird noises. Then he left the car, I thought he was gonna puke or something so I followed him out.
The two stood on the sidewalk on Main Street, near where Lee was eventually seen staggering on surveillance camera after being stabbed. Momeni said he was “kind of annoyed” that the drink spilled in his car, and was considering calling it a night, while Lee wanted to continue partying. That’s when he says he made the “bad joke” that sent Lee “from zero to 100.”
“He’s yelling, cussing at me, starts going around, circling, moving around me, then gets in my face,” Momeni said. Eventually, he said Lee bumped or pushed his chest, then reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a knife.
That “Joseph Joseph” branded knife matched two knives police found at Khazar’s home. Prosecutors have used that connection to allege that Momeni brought the knife from his sister’s place to attack Lee over perceived inappropriate activities between Lee and Khazar.
But in his testimony today, Momeni insisted there was no bad blood with Lee whatsoever, and that the two had been very friendly.
Momeni said that once he saw the weapon, he attempted to “control [Lee’s] hands,” but couldn’t as Lee pulled back. Then, he said, Lee took a swing at him.
On the witness stand, Zangeneh demonstrated the swing, and Momeni demonstrated a two-handed attempt to pin Zangeneh’s swinging arm back into his chest. He said he kept pushing Lee in this way until they reached the Caltrans parking lot fence, at the edge of the sidewalk.
Afterward, he said he let go, and Lee walked away.
“He was just casually walking away on his phone, just texting or whatever he was doing,” Momeni said, adding that Lee did not communicate or respond to his questions about what had just happened.
In the grainy surveillance footage from the Bay Bridge, Lee’s figure can be seen moving up Main Street. Meanwhile, Momeni’s figure approaches the fence, purportedly throws the knife over it, and departs in the opposite direction. The knife was later found by police investigators in the parking lot.
Lee’s brother Oliver repeatedly shook his head incredulously at Momeni’s account of the stabbing — prosecutor Omid Talai, during a brief cross-examination this afternoon, also seemed incredulous at Momeni’s defense.
Talai: Your story is that this prominent beloved respected man … he wanted to kill you over a dumb joke?
Momeni: That was the situation, I saw him pull it out. I had to react to it.
Talai: Over a dumb joke?
Momeni: I don’t know why the events took off like that. It doesn’t make sense.
Talai: It doesn’t make sense, I agree with you.
Lee’s brother, after hearing today’s testimony, called Momeni’s defense argument “absolutely insane” and “not even within the realm of possibility.”
“They’ve had 18 months to come up with something and this is what they come up with?” Oliver Lee said in the hallway.
The aftermath
Momeni said he found out on the morning of April 5 that Lee had died, so he contacted an attorney for advice and went to his mother’s house in Mill Valley for “emotional support” — this could explain why police investigators could not locate Momeni or his car at his Emeryville home.
Momeni said his car was broken into the month prior, and his window was acting up, so he left his BMW at his mother’s house — this could explain why his BMW wasn’t discovered by police investigators until later, after his arrest, when his mother took the car into the dealership to sell it.
The jacket that he wore on the night of the stabbing, Momeni said, might also have been left at his mother’s home — this could be why police never found it at his apartment.
And, in the days after the stabbing, police secretly surveilling Momeni took video of him making what prosecutors say are the same stabbing motions Momeni might have made to kill Lee. Momeni is seen in the video making one low motion with his right arm, then two higher-up swings of his arm.
Today, Momeni said he was actually reenacting Lee’s actions on the night of the stabbing — not his own.
Momeni’s family and background
Momeni’s testimony today also shed some light on his personal background; he said that he began pre-military training as a youth in Tehran, and that he practiced martial arts there and in the Bay Area as an adult. He said he has done multiple training bootcamps in different martial arts like Krav Maga and Muay Thai.
As he described fleeing his abusive father with his mother and sister, Momeni wiped apparent tears from his eyes, as did his mother, who watched from the audience.
He also referred to his sister as his “best friend,” and said that her drug abuse in recent years was a “major problem.”
Zangeneh showed jurors various text messages between the siblings to highlight Khazar’s “hot and cold behavior,” which Momeni said was exacerbated by her drug use.
Khazar alleged that Lee’s friend, Jeremy Boivin, sexually assaulted her in the evening before the stabbing. But after Momeni spoke with Lee and Boivin, he said he decided that his sister was just “being emotional”
Despite prosecutors’ premise that Momeni was an overprotective brother who was angry with Lee, Momeni insisted that he was never really angry with anyone that day.
Text messages show Lee inviting Momeni to a strip club around 11 p.m. on April 3. Around that same time Momeni had invited Boivin over to Millennium Tower, and things were friendly — Boivin, as he left, invited Momeni to go to Tahoe together.
Zangeneh: If you go back and change anything, what would you change?
Momeni: I would have sent him home in an Uber, or just stayed up and partied with him all night … anything.
Zangeneh: Did you ever have any ill will toward Mr. Lee?
Momeni: Never.
Zangeneh: How do you feel knowing that the actions that happened on Main Street resulted in him passing away?
Momeni: I feel awful, to his family, to himself. He didn’t deserve it, I don’t think anybody deserves that. I don’t know why that had to happen.
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