A Brooklyn man convicted of brutally murdering tech entrepreneur Fahim Saleh, dismembering his body with an electric saw in a depraved effort to conceal the July 2020 killing — and the theft of more than $400,000 — was sentenced Tuesday to 40 years to life in prison.
The steep sentence for Tyrese Haspil, 25, was handed down at a packed Manhattan Supreme Court proceeding less than two months after a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder, grand larceny, concealment of a human corpse, and related counts.
In a stunning turn of events more than two hours into the hearing, Haspil said he disagreed with his lawyer’s impassioned plea to spare him from dying in prison, and told the judge the back-to-back 25-year terms requested by prosecutors would represent justice served.
“Unlike my counsel,” Haspil said, “I don’t think anything less than life without parole would be appropriate.”
Fahim Saleh
Obtained by New York Daily News Fahim Saleh
Before imposing the sentence, state Supreme Court Justice April Newbauer said Haspil appeared to be driven primarily by greed.
“It seems like money played a major role in the answer. One person had it, another took it and wanted to keep taking it without consequences at all costs. This is the very essence of greed,” Newbauer said.
Saleh, 33, who was raised in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., by his Bangladeshi parents, co-founded two companies, including the Nigerian motorcycle ride-sharing service Gokada.
He hired Haspil as an entrepreneurial assistant in May 2018, and first caught him stealing from him months before the July 10, 2020, murder inside his Lower East Side condo. Saleh decided not to report Haspil to police, instead offering a plan to repay him over time, jurors heard at trial.
“My brother took a chance on you, a chance you did not deserve,” Saleh’s younger sister, Rifayat Saleh, said in an emotional victim impact statement. “You’re a conman, and you’re a murderer. I have no sympathy for you.”
Haspil quit his job in 2019 fearing Saleh would find out how much he had stolen from his companies in two rackets that raked in at least $400,000. Jurors heard of the pains he took for months planning the grisly killing as he feared Saleh would uncover one of the schemes.
The night of the murder, he quietly followed someone in Saleh’s building and waited for the victim to return from a run, jurors heard at trial. He followed him into an elevator that opened into Saleh’s apartment and tased him in the back before fatally stabbing him in the neck and torso.
Haspil came back the next day to clean up the crime scene and dismember Saleh’s body with an electric saw — leaving to buy a charger at Home Depot on W. 23rd St. when the saw’s battery ran out.
Saleh’s cousin visited the apartment in the interim and discovered his butchered remains, missing his arms, leg, and head. Haspel was arrested about a week later at an Airbnb he’d rented for himself and his girlfriend.
Haspil continued to steal from his victim in death, jurors heard at the trial. The victim’s relatives called him out on Tuesday for wearing a suit to trial that he purchased with Saleh’s stolen money.
“Even after the defendant stole from him to fund a lavish lifestyle, Mr. Saleh still gave him a second chance,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement, describing the victim as “a kind, generous, and empathetic person who positively impacted the world.”
In requesting a lenient sentence, Haspil’s attorney, Sam Roberts, said he had shown genuine remorse and “horror” at his actions and had been forthcoming with prosecutors.
Roberts said Haspil had experienced significant trauma that he personally underplayed. His maternal grandmother raised him after his mother was institutionalized when he was a child. He then ended up in the foster care system, where he was subjected to abuse, Roberts said.
“He has never once tried to wiggle out from underneath this,” Roberts said. “He’s a young man who’s still trying to understand how this happened and who he was during those fateful months.”
Roberts pointed out that prosecutors were essentially requesting a term of life without parole — in complete contradiction to a policy never to do so by DA Bragg, who sat in the courtroom’s back row throughout the hours-long hearing.
“It is a de facto life sentence,” Roberts said.
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