In front of an unbearable sequence of a horror film, you can look away, turn off your screen or reassure yourself by thinking that it is only cinema. When fiction becomes reality, there is no escape. Pushing the door of her cousin's apartment on Tuesday in Manhattan (United States), a young American woman was thus confronted with a particularly traumatic macabre scene.
In the living room invaded by silence, she saw a human torso placed in a corner of this luxurious housing bought $ 2.25 million by Fahim Saleh, dynamic and humanist boss of start-up aged 37 years. Arrived in turn on the 7th floor of this building in the Lower East Side neighborhood, the police will discover near the bust an electric saw still plugged in, a portable vacuum cleaner, cleaning products, and especially large plastic bags containing the head and the four members of the victim. A victim who is immediately identified as Fahim Saleh, and whose alleged murderer was officially charged on Saturday in New York.
Dressed like a ninja, mask and black latex gloves
The contractor's personal assistant for several years, 21-year-old Tyrese Devon Haspil is suspected of having killed his ex-employer on Monday by stabbing him in the chest and neck, then coming back to butchering the body the next day . According to investigators, this young man from Long Island tried to pass this crime as that of a professional killer, an act potentially linked to the victim's activities. The goal ? Do not draw suspicion to him. It must be said that Tyrese Haspil had every chance of appearing on a narrow list of suspects.
A graduate of a New York school, where he won an award for creating websites, the young man had been dismissed by Fahim Saleh after the latter discovered that he had stolen a large sum of money , about 90,000 dollars. The boss of start-ups, for which Tyrese would have worked from the age of 16 by starting to walk his dog, was not severe. He decided not to file a complaint, instructing his former close associate to repay his "debt" by respecting a payment schedule. His ex-assistant, it seems, has opted for a completely different solution.
Fahim Saleh's assassin was filmed by security cameras in the victim's ultra-residential building. Recorded on Monday, the images show a man seated in the hall. When the manager arrives, he gets up and follows him, a travel bag on his shoulder. He is dressed entirely in black and wears a mask and latex gloves, also black. "Dressed like a ninja, impossible to see the smallest detail of his face," said a police officer.
The two men find themselves in the private elevator which leads directly into the contractor's apartment. On the 7th floor, we guess a brief exchange between them. Then the "ninja" neutralizes Fahim Saleh by shooting him in the back with an electric pulse pistol. The 30's collapses. The elevator doors close on this last disturbing image.
Disturbed by the ringing of the intercom
The next day, a cousin of the young businessman is surprised not to hear from him. She chooses to go to his house. Ring the intercom. Get no response. Increasingly intrigued, the young woman decides to go and look in the apartment. The close relative of Fahim falls on this scene of terror but very real. A few hours later, barbaric crime flooded New York newspapers and their news sites.
It reads that the victim's arms were methodically cut under the shoulders, the legs with the same surgical precision under the knees. The author of these dismemberments, who also cut off the head, would have waited for the victim's blood to clot, which could explain the absence of hemoglobin in the room ... In short, a work of sadist and experienced killer. Except for one detail.
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Why did you abandon the plastic bags usually used for rubble? And the saw? Investigators will quickly understand that, on Tuesday, the murderer, filmed with a gray hoodie this time, returned to remove the body and clean up any suspicious traces. But he was disturbed by the ringing of the intercom. And he fled right away through a door at the back and then hurtling down a stairwell while the victim's cousin went up to the 7th floor.
This crime does not only attract media attention because of its barbaric dimension. There is also the personality of the victim. At 37, Fahim Saleh is rich and already famous. This charismatic boss, described by some as a “Guru of new technologies”, embodies these social successes that America loves.
A guru of new social fiber technologies
Born in Saudi Arabia to a middle-class Bangladeshi couple, Fahim migrates with his parents and two sisters to New York State. He became very interested in the Internet, a world which fascinated him. Little by little, he sacrifices his passion for video games to him. Still a teenager, Fahim sets up a website for his family, then discovers his talents as a programmer and launches blogs, the embryo of business which earns him a few dollars. Next step: an application to deliver meals to students, an already more profitable project. His path is mapped out.
A graduate of a university in Massachusetts, the young man struck a first blow in 2009 by creating PrankDial, an application that allows users to send pranks or prank jokes or pranks. A success in millions. Six years later, Fahim is one of the co-founders of a motorcycle carpooling start-up in Bangladesh. In 2018, he left this company to embark on the adventure of Gokada, a motorcycle carpooling application developed in Nigeria.
The young American is guided by his business sense but also his social fiber. Gokada, whom he does not consider as a simple enterprise but "a mission" must provide work for hundreds of young graduates and ambitious but unemployed. A simple “springboard” for another life according to Fahim's hope.
Admired for his innovative spirit, Fahim Saleh is also appreciated humanely. "Someone extremely intelligent, ambitious, but also very kind and always smiling," reacted his close friends in several American media. A good man too. He would thus always have been generous with Tyrese, offering him important emoluments which enabled the assistant to settle the debts of several members of his family. This liberality may have ended up costing him his life ...
Beginner mistakes
Returning to the scene of his crime Tuesday, the assassin thought to put a final touch to his scenario intended to guide the investigators on the track of a settlement of account related to the activities of the businessman. Especially since his former boss has experienced disappointments. Nigeria eventually banned the service launched by Gokada, forcing its founder to fire hundreds of people.
Fahim Saleh had also raised several million dollars in a venture capital fund investing in start-ups in Colombia and Bangladesh. Companies specializing in digital services aimed at "making life better" in developing countries. The idea, for Tyrese, was to make credible the thesis of a commercial dispute settled in a bloodbath. But the young man will be reckless. According to an investigator cited by the New York Times, the alleged murderer made "several beginner's mistakes".
The “Elon Musk of Developing Countries”
First by ordering on the Net an electric impulse gun using, it seems, his own credit card, then by signing the package shipped in June. Another reckless act was filmed at 9:30 am Tuesday in a Manhattan store buying an electric saw and cleaning supplies. Even grosser clumsiness, Tyrese allegedly used a credit card from his former boss to pay for balloons intended to celebrate the birthday of the woman he was staying with in Soho. So many errors that led to his arrest Friday morning.
In an inmate jumpsuit as white as his ninja costume was black, Tyrese Devon Haspil, blue mask on the face, refused to answer questions asked by journalists during his transfer to the prison. The man who previously had no criminal record was charged with 2nd degree murder on Saturday. The judge ordered his imprisonment, without bail.
Counsel for the suspect indicated that their client had pleaded not guilty, urging the public to be cautious and impartial in a long and complex affair. A case that above all plunged into an "unfathomable" grief the family of Fahim Saleh, whom his friends nicknamed the "Elon Musk of developing countries".