From embezzlement to dismemberment: attorneys roped a personal assistant’s girlfriend into the motivation behind a boss beheading linked to $400,000.
Nearly four years after 33-year-old entrepreneur Fahim Saleh was found killed and cut to pieces in his Lower East Side apartment, the victim’s now 25-year-old assistant Tyrese Haspil appeared in Manhattan Supreme Court to stand trial. In addition to hearing the 911 call of the discovery of the businessman’s body, jurors heard the defense argue “extreme emotional disturbance” related to fear of being “abandoned” by his girlfriend was behind the alleged actions of their client.
After initially discovering roughly $90,000 missing from a corporate bank account in Jan. 2020, Saleh, the founder of the Nigeria-based ride-share and delivery service Gokada, was said to have confronted his assistant about the money. The New York Post reported that rather than press charges, the boss had been willing to establish a repayment plan for his assistant, but the sum had been closer to $400,000.
Though it “might not be rational to us,” defense attorney Sam Roberts expressed how Haspil had allegedly handled his concern his then-girlfriend Marine Chaveuz would learn about the money,” from his point of view, in his shoes, at that time, it made some sort of sense to him.”
The suggestion that the young man had killed his boss as a crime of passion connected to a troubled childhood with a schizophrenic mother was hardly so reasonable to the prosecution which played an undisputed video of Haspil following Saleh into his apartment and employing a Taser on the man.
That device was said to have been purchased a month prior and shipped to the suspect’s Brooklyn home and matched an “anti-felon disk” located at the scene.
“Over this period of time, he was planning not only to commit the homicide but to get away with it…To cover it up and how to erase his debt and prevent Fahim Saleh from testifying in criminal proceedings,” said Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Linda Ford.
“Oh my God. Oh my God,” the victim’s cousin was heard telling a 911 operator after finding the dismembered corpse when she had stopped in to check on Saleh, according to Business Insider.
Initially unclear as to what the woman had described, audio of the call played for the court included the operator asking the cousin, “Is he breathing?”
“No! His head is missing, his arms are missing and his legs are missing!”
In the days after the victim was reportedly stabbed to death, it was alleged that Haspil had searched where the joints in the human body were, proceeded to saw Saleh into pieces that were put into construction bags and used the victim’s credit card to make high-end retail purchases for another woman.
Haspil had pled not guilty to first-degree murder charges that, if convicted, would mean a minimum sentence of 20 years to life in prison. The defense has endeavored to get the charges reduced to manslaughter, which would land the suspect five to 25 years if convicted. Prosecution is expected to continue in the week to come.
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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