“It’s been two days since my uncle Fahim Saleh was killed in his apartment in New York. My father was telling me about him yesterday, with tears in his eyes. Fahim uncle’s father was the person who admitted my father in a college in Dhaka, took care of him since day one.”

 

–  Nahiyan, CSE Student. Fútbol Club Barcelona. La Masia.

The personal assistant of Fahim Saleh, a young tech entrepreneur, who became famous in Lagos-Nigeria for a motorcycle business called “GoKada”; has been arrested in connection with his death.

Saleh, 33, was found decapitated and dismembered in his $2.25 million condo in a luxury building on the Lower East Side, this week.

Text messages show the 21-year-old PA was stealing his money running into tens of thousands of dollars and he found out. The late CEO did not report his PA for theft but drew up a repayment plan for him.

The PA used his credit card to buy the saw used to cut Fahim’s head and slice Fahim’s body.

Detectives investigating the murder believe the killer’s work dismembering the body was interrupted when Mr. Saleh’s sister buzzed from the building’s lobby, another official said, prompting him to flee through the apartment’s back door and into a stairwell before the sister arrived.

She found a gruesome scene: Mr. Saleh’s head and limbs had been removed, and parts of his body had been placed in large plastic bags. An electric saw was still plugged in nearby.

The PA was arrested early on Friday and is expected to be charged in the grisly killing, according to two officials briefed on the matter.

His name is Tyrese Devon Haspil and he is 21years-old.

Devon is expected to be charged in a criminal complaint with second-degree murder and other crimes.

According to New York Times, detectives believe that the motive for the killing stemmed from Mr. Saleh’s having discovered that the assistant had stolen tens of thousands of dollars from him, despite the fact that Mr. Saleh had not reported the man and had set up what amounted to a repayment plan for him to return the money, one of the officials said.

The investigators have also concluded that Mr. Saleh was killed on Monday, the day before his body was found, and that 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 sanitize the crime scene, the official said. The killer returned to Mr. Saleh’s apartment the next day to dismember the body and clean up.

Earlier, based on little evidence, detectives believe that the killer, dressed in a black three-piece suit, wearing a black mask and carrying a duffel bag, followed Mr. Saleh off an elevator in his building and into his apartment, a law enforcement official said. He used a Taser to immobilize Mr. Saleh and then stabbed him to death.

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, the official said.

New York City’s medical examiner announced on Thursday that Mr. Saleh had died from multiple stab wounds to his neck and torso. Initially, a law enforcement official had described the killing as a “hit” and said it looked “like a professional job.”

Mr. Saleh’s family said in a statement on Wednesday that the gruesome killing was so shocking it was unfathomable.

“Fahim is more than what you are reading,” the family said. “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.”

Mr. Saleh was born in Saudi Arabia to Bangladeshi parents who eventually settled near Poughkeepsie, N.Y., a small city on the Hudson River.

After graduating from Bentley University in Waltham, Mass., in 2009, he built an app called PrankDial that allowed users to send prerecorded prank calls. Mr. Saleh said he eventually built PrankDial into a $10 million business.

Mr. Saleh went on to found Pathao, a motorcycle ride-sharing start-up in Bangladesh. He left that company in 2018 to begin a similar venture in Nigeria, an app known as Gokada.