His Death Turned Bob Lee Into a Symbol—His Friends Are Trying to Take Him Back

I’ve got some bad news. It’s about Bob.”

A friend was on the phone, calling Jake Shields with news about their buddy Bob Lee.

“Oh, shit. Is he OK?” said Shields, a mixed martial arts fighter who lives near Las Vegas.

“No.”

The news of Lee’s killing on April 4 spread quickly among the close-knit but far-flung group that called the technology executive a friend. They were shocked. They never expected anything like this to ever happen to him. They knew Lee as kind, outgoing, adventurous and optimistic, not as someone who would get caught up in violence. They called and texted frantically, trying to piece together what had happened.

As they spread the word, they also shouldered a terrible weight. Not only had they lost a man they loved, but, because of what others were posting on social media, the world was rapidly losing sight of who Lee actually was. In people’s rush to cast his dath into a symbol of everything that was wrong with San Francisco, a peaceful man was being weaponized.