Tyrese Haspil charged with murdering tech CEO Fahim Saleh
A trusted employee of tech CEO and investor Fahim Saleh was arrested on Friday in his boss’ slaying and dismemberment on the Lower East Side — with sources saying the motive involved a broken promise to repay $100,000 in stolen cash.
Tyrese Haspil, 21, was charged with second-degree murder over the grisly slaying inside Saleh’s $2.2 million East Houston Street apartment, NYPD Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison said during a brief afternoon news conference.
Haspil worked as Saleh’s “executive assistant” and handled the international entrepreneur’s “finances and personal matters,” Harrison said.
“It is also believed that he owed the victim a significant amount of money,” the chief added.
The debt stemmed from Haspil’s alleged embezzlement of $100,000 from Saleh, who in 2018 founded Gokada, a Nigerian motorcycle ride-sharing company that recently transitioned into a delivery service.
Saleh — whom one pal has called “the Elon Musk of the developing world” — gave Haspil the title of chief of staff at his Adventure Capital investment firm.
But Haspil — a former Hofstra University student who the school said dropped out after his freshman year — allegedly repaid the kindness by ripping off his boss.
But Saleh, 33, cut Haspil an even bigger break by not going to authorities when he discovered the betrayal, sources said.
Instead, Saleh brokered a repayment plan with Haspil — only for Haspil to kill him rather than honor the deal, sources charged.
“This was an act of charity that turned into an act of murder,” a source said.
Investigators have linked Haspil to the slaying through evidence recovered from a Taser that is believed to have been used to incapacitate Saleh, sources said.
In addition to electrical probes, Tasers are typically equipped to discharge tiny confetti-like pieces of paper printed with identifying markers when fired.
Such pieces of paper were allegedly found in Saleh’s seventh-floor apartment at 265 E. Houston St., and records show Haspil bought the Taser in question using a personal credit card, sources said.
Other evidence includes records that show he allegedly used Saleh’s credit cards to pay for car-service rides to and from the Home Depot store on West 23rd Street, where he allegedly bought supplies to clean up the killing, sources said.
Surveillance video allegedly shows him going in and out of the store.
Sources have said that Saleh’s corpse was cut up with an electrical saw and that the body parts were stuffed into plastic bags left in his apartment.
Haspil allegedly attacked Saleh with the Taser at 1:45 p.m. Monday while Saleh was getting off an elevator that opened directly into his apartment, Harrison said.
Cops learned about the killing the next day, when a cousin went to check on Saleh and found his butchered remains, Harrison said.
Sources have said the killer may have been trying to cover up the murder when the cousin rang the apartment’s buzzer, prompting him to flee down the stairs.
Haspil was arrested at 8:45 a.m. in the lobby of 172 Crosby St. by members of the New York/New Jersey Regional Fugitive Task Force, Harrison said.
Haspil had been staying in a pricey Airbnb rental there since Wednesday, and investigators were able to locate him because he used a credit card to pay for it, a source said.
Byron Allen, a building superintendent next door, saw the bust go down and said Haspil seemed “very serene and very calm” as he was hauled off in handcuffs.
“He looked like a little kid who got caught stealing a lollipop out of the store,” Allen, 56, said. “That’s the look he had.”
Later in the day, investigators executed a search warrant in the building, and The Post saw them carry out a large collection of luxury handbags.
At Haspil’s apartment building in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park South neighborhood, fourth-floor neighbor Martin Romero, 29, said he heard detectives knock on Haspil’s door and ask to speak to a young woman who let them in between 10 and 11 a.m.
A woman was later seen leaving with detectives but ignored questions from reporters.
A former schoolmate and friend who ran track with Haspil at Valley Stream Central HS in Valley Stream, LI, said, “He was very private with his life because I think he had a rough childhood.”
“I remember when we would go pick him up to go hang out he would be living in a foster home,” said the woman, 23.
Still, she said, he “always had a smile on his face he never really complained.”
A man who resides at an address linked to Haspil identified himself as Haspil’s cousin and said that Haspil had lived with his family for a time as teen.
“He seemed like he wanted to have some type of guidance,” he recalled.
The man said that while Haspil “follows bad examples,” he had “never seen him as capable of doing something like” Saleh’s slaying.
Haspil ignored questions from reporters as he was escorted out of the 7th Precinct station house on the Lower East Side, clad in a white jumpsuit, booties and blue face mask, pending arraignment Friday night.
Additional reporting by Tina Moore, Steven Vago, Khristina Narizhnaya, Doug Cortese and Jason Beeferman