The New York Police Department (NYPD) has arrested a suspect in the murder of Gokada‘s founder, Fahim Saleh.
The victim was found decapitated and dismembered in his Manhattan apartment on Tuesday.
The personal assistant of the young tech entrepreneur was arrested on Friday. He is to face charges in the gruesome murder of the tech founder, according to the New York Times.
Saleh, 33, was discovered dead on Tuesday afternoon by his sister inside his $2.25 million condo in a luxury building on the Lower East Side, the police said.
She had gone to check in on him after not hearing from him for about a day.
She found Saleh’s head and limbs removed, and parts of his body had been placed in large plastic bags. An electric saw was still plugged in nearby.
The personal assistant, Tyrese Devon Haspil, 21, is expected to be charged in a criminal complaint with second-degree murder and other crimes.
The police who had earlier suspected that the killing might have been financially motivated confirmed on Friday that it indeed was.
According to the police, the motive for the gruesome killing stemmed from Saleh having discovered that the assistant had stolen tens of thousands of dollars from him.
Saleh had failed to report the crime and but had set up what amounted to a repayment plan for him to return the money.
Their findings concluded that Saleh was killed on Monday, the day before his body was found. The killer used his employer’s credit card to pay for a car to a home depot, on West 23rd Street in Manhattan, to buy cleaning supplies to sanitise the crime scene, the official said.
The killer reportedly returned to Saleh’s apartment the next day to dismember the body and clean up the crime scene.
The killer who dressed in a black three-piece suit, wearing a black mask and carrying a duffel bag, was captured in a surveillance camera, following Saleh off an elevator in his building and into his apartment.
He was said to have used a taser to immobilise Saleh and then stabbed him to death.
The security video taken from inside the elevator shows the killer later using a battery-operated portable vacuum cleaner in an apparent effort to remove any traces of his presence.
In the meantime, an autopsy conducted by a New York medical examiner showed that Saleh had died from multiple stab wounds to his neck and torso.
Initially, a law enforcement official had described the killing as a “hit” that looked “like a professional job” because the killer had put the dismembered body inside contractor bags as if to hide the evidence of the crime.
According to the police detective, the killer’s work of dismembering the body was interrupted when Saleh’s sister buzzed from the building’s lobby, prompting him to flee through the apartment’s back door and into a stairwell before the sister arrived.
His family in reacting to the killing said, “Fahim is more than what you are reading. He is so much more. His brilliant and innovative mind took everyone who was a part of his world on a journey and he made sure never to leave anyone behind.”
He has been described by friends as a self-made millionaire who brought tech companies into nations like Nigeria and Indonesia.
They called him the “Elon Musk of the developing world” for his efforts to bring an Uber-like start-up to Nigeria.