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Gokada CEO Found Murdered In His Apartment With Head, Limb Cut Off
The corpse of the CEO of Gokada, Fahim Saleh, was found in his apartment in a condo in Manhattan, New York on Tuesday.
Gokada was a Lagos-based motorcycle-hailing startup. The company was launched in January 2018. It was founded to solve Nigeria’s largest city traffic problems.
The body of Saleh was found headless and limbless and headless. An electric saw was found lying next to the remains, police said.
Police made the grisly discovery in a building on E. Houston St. at Suffolk St. on the Lower Eastside about 3:30 p.m. They also found contractor bags near the torso, sources said, but didn’t immediately open them to see if the body parts were inside.
An NYPD official said investigators said the 33-year old tech millionaire entrepreneur bought the condo for $2.25 million last year.
Saleh, a website developer turned venture capital, is the CEO of Gokada, a motorcycle-sharing company in Lagos, Nigeria.
NYPD spokesman Sgt. Carlos Nieves said all of the body parts were found at the scene but declined to give specifics on where.
“We have a torso, a head that’s been removed, arms, and legs. Everything is still on the scene. We don’t have a motive,” he said.
Detectives were waiting for fingerprint and forensics tests on the body, police sources said.
The NYPD went to the seventh-floor condo after the victim’s sister called 911. She came calling Tuesday because she had not seen her brother in a day, then discovered his dismembered corpse, an NYPD spokesman said.
An elevator surveillance camera may have caught the victim’s last moments, sources said. It shows the victim getting into the elevator Monday, followed quickly by a second man, dressed in a suit, wearing gloves, a hat and a mask over his face.
After the victim walked out onto his floor, he fell immediately, possibly shot or stunned.
“The perp had a suitcase. He was very professional,” one police source said.
The curtains were drawn at the newly-constructed apartment building, where condos were sold starting at $2.15 million last year.
Neighbour Daniel Faust, 40, said he saw police lead two women from the building.
“There was one that came first, with short black hair. Then a second one came, a little taller and with long hair. They were just hysterical, I guess in disbelief. And then they left with the detectives,” he said.
Police also brought a dog, a mid-sized Pomsky, out of the building, he said.
Saleh has described his history as an entrepreneur in a series of posts on Medium.com. He got his start creating a prank calling website, then moved on to create a motorcycle taxi company in his parents’ native Bangladesh.
Most recently, he started Gokada, a motorcycle ride-sharing company in Lagos, but the company faced setbacks and mass layoffs after Lagos banned companies like his in January.
Detectives took his sister to the 7th Precinct stationhouse Tuesday night, and ushered her away from reporters.
Later, two of Saleh’s friends, a man and a woman, arrived at the precinct to check on his sister.
“He was extremely smart, ambitious, very kind,” the female friend said. “Always smiling.”
They described him as a self-made millionaire who brought tech companies into nations like Nigeria and Indonesia, an energetic person who loved gadgets and video games. CEO
Though they believe he was targeted, he never acted like he was worried about anything, the friend said.
