BUSTED: How ex-PA, Tyrese Haspil killed Gokada founder [PHOTOS]

Tyrese Haspil, an ex-personal assistant to Gokada founder and Chief Executive Officer, Fahim Saleh, has been arrested, TopNaija can confirm.

Saleh was gruesomely murdered by a faceless assassin earlier this week who left his decapitated and dismembered body inside his Lower East Side apartment, in New York City.

Haspil, 21, is in police custody and expected to be charged with the murder of Saleh, according to New York Post. Haspil once worked at Saleh’s venture capital firm, Adventure Capital.

Haspil is a self-described “entrepreneur” who graduated from a Long Island High School, where he competed in business contests in web design and ran track. However, whereas Saleh built a fortune on tech start-ups and a prank website, Haspil, also an aspiring entrepreneur, was relegated to working for him, and a business theft may have provided a motive for the grisly slaying, The Times reported.

Police gathered that Haspil allegedly stole $100,000 from the late 33-year-old tech entrepreneur but rather than handing him over to law enforcement agents, the late Gokada CEO brokered a repayment plan with him.

However, Haspil allegedly reneged on the deal at some point. “This was an act of charity that turned into an act of murder,” a source told New York Post. Security footage from inside the elevator shows Haspil using a portable vacuum to try and cover his tracks, the source said.

Closed Circuit Television video from Saleh’s East Houston Street apartment building shows the businessman and a smartly dressed Haspil riding together in the elevator — which opens straight out to his apartment — on Monday afternoon.

Saleh’s ride-hailing start-up provided thousands of jobs in Lagos State before the government banned motorcycle operations from major routes in the West African economic hub.

In latest development, a video has revealed that the man the police believe to be Mr. Haspil following Mr. Saleh into his building and then into an elevator, where they appear to engage in small talk, the officials said.

The suspect was dressed in a black three-piece suit and wore a black mask and latex gloves, the officials said. He was carrying a duffel bag.

As the two men left the elevator, which opened directly into Mr. Saleh’s seventh-floor unit, the assailant fired a Taser into Mr. Saleh’s back, immobilizing him, law enforcement officials said. He then stabbed Mr. Saleh to death, wounding him multiple times in his neck and torso.

After the attack, the suspect used a credit card to hire a car to go to a Home Depot, on West 23rd Street in Manhattan, and to buy cleaning supplies, the fourth official said. The next day, dressed in a gray hooded sweatshirt, the assailant returned to Mr. Saleh’s apartment to dismember the body and clean up the crime scene.

Security video from inside Mr. Saleh’s elevator showed that the suspect used a portable vacuum cleaner, perhaps in an effort to remove residue that was left behind when the Taser was fired, the officials said.

But while the assailant was cutting up the body, Mr. Saleh’s cousin buzzed the apartment from the building’s lobby. Before she got upstairs, the attacker fled through a back door and down a stairwell, officials said.

Only four years ago, Mr. Haspil graduated from Central High School in Valley Stream, N.Y., where he won an award for website design, according to local news articles. In 2017, he entered Hofstra as a member of its class of 2021.

Detectives believe that he began working for Mr. Saleh when he was 16, and eventually started managing some of his finances as well as taking care of personal matters, like caring for his dog. One official said Mr. Saleh paid him well enough that he was able to settle the debts of several members of his family.

Detectives believe that the motive for the killing stemmed from Mr. Saleh having discovered that Mr. Haspil had stolen roughly $90,000 from him, two officials familiar with the investigation said. Credit…Yuki Iwamura for The New York Times

Shortly after 5 p.m. on Friday, Mr. Haspil was led out of the 7th Precinct station house on the Lower East Side in handcuffs and a white jumpsuit. He declined to answer questions fired at him by reporters.

Initially, a law enforcement official had described Mr. Saleh’s death as a “hit,” but some investigators now believe that Mr. Haspil may have tried to make the killing look like a professional assassination in an effort to trick detectives into thinking it was linked to Mr. Saleh’s business deals.

Still, one investigator said that Mr. Haspil made “several rookie mistakes” — including buying a Taser online with his own credit card and signing for the package when it arrived in June.

The superintendent at the Crosby Street apartment said the police told him that Mr. Haspil had also used one of Mr. Saleh’s credit cards to buy balloons to celebrate the birthday of the woman he was staying with. On Friday afternoon, the superintendent said, the balloons were still in the apartment.

“The credit card was used to buy balloons, and this and that, because he was with a girl for her birthday,” the superintendent said. “How stupid can you be?”

Photo Credit: New York Times