New York police on Friday arrested the personal assistant of Fahim Saleh, a tech entrepreneur and co-founder of Bangladeshi ride-sharing app Pathao, who was brutally murdered in his own apartment in Manhattan three days back.
The assistant - Tyrese Devon Haspil, 21 - was taken to police custody for his suspected involvement in the murder and likely to be accused in the case, reports The New York Times quoting police sources.
Fahim Saleh, also the CEO and founder of Gokada, a motorcycle ride-sharing app in Lagos, Nigeria, was found decapitated and dismembered in his luxurious condo in Manhattan of the city on Tuesday when his sister went there looking for him.
Police observed professional nature in the grisly murder and suspected a possible financial motive in behind. They also said the hitman had to bolt from the apartment using a staircase without completing the work of dismemberment when Fahim’s sister got into the elevator to check on her brother.
Fahim had recently come to know that Haspil misappropriated tens of thousands of dollars from him. Although Fahim set up a repayment plan for him to return the money, it didn’t work out, an official told the NYT.
Police now suspect the motive for the killing may have originated from those circumstances.
Meanwhile, the investigators discovered that Fahim was killed on Monday and the killer came back to the apartment on Tuesday to dismember the body and remove evidence.
Fahim was regarded as a rising star in the tech world. Friends called the young investor the “Elon Musk of the developing world”.
Roughly two years after co-founding Pathao, Fahim co-founded Gokada in Lagos, Nigeria in December 2017, and took over as its CEO in April of last year. Most recently, he oversaw Gokada’s transition to delivery service during the coronavirus pandemic.
He also launched the venture capital firm Adventure Capital in New York in 2018.
His start-up company Gokada was in trouble. It raised $5.3 million in funding in May 2019, Techcrunch reported. In February this year, the company laid off 75 percent of its workforce after the government banned tricycles and bikes in Lagos, Benjamin Dada reported.
In a statement, the Gokada team described Fahim as “a great leader, an inspiration and a positive light for all of us at Gokada”.
"Fahim’s vision and belief in us will always be with us, a reminder that we can achieve whatever we set our minds to … Forever in our hearts," it said.
mj/
