Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, 45, was acquitted of involuntary manslaughter charges and assault with a deadly weapon. He was found not guilty of Kate Steinle’s death that occurred when she was walking with her father on San Francisco’s Pear 14 nearly two years ago.
Garcia Zarate argued that the shooting was an accident, but prosecutors believed he deliberately shot Steinle with a Sig Saucer .40-caliber handgun. His attorneys claimed the bullet ricocheted off the ground and subsequently pierced Steinle, who was standing about 80 feet away.
This unfortunate incident occurred in 2015, and it ignited the immigration conversation all over again. Before he accidentally shot Steinle, Garcia Zarate got deported on five separate occasions, and many say that San Francisco’s status as a sanctuary city is to blame for what transpired.
Prior to the fatal shooting, San Francisco authorities released Garcia Zarate from custody instead of turning him over to immigration officials. Conservative pundit, Ann Coulter, took to Twitter to say Steinle “would still be alive if we had a wall.”
Jury convinced that illegal alien killed Kate Steinle accidentally. She would still be alive if we had a wall.
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) December 1, 2017
Public defender Francisco Ugarte has another point of view, though, saying this is not about immigration. “From day one, this case was used as a means to foment hate, to foment division and to foment a program of mass deportation,” he explained.
“Nothing about Mr. Garcia Zarate’s ethnicity, nothing about his immigration status, nothing about the fact that he is born in Mexico had any relevance as to what happened on July 1, 2015,” Ugarte stated. Despite the jury concluding it was all an accident, Steinle’s family remain unhappy with the verdict.
“We just want to get this over with and move on with our lives and think about Kate on our terms. Nothing’s been on our terms. It’s been on everyone else’s terms,” said Steinle’s father, Jim. “There’s no other way you can coin it. Justice was rendered, but it was not served.”
During the trial, prosecutors claimed Garcia Zarate was playing his own twisted version of Russian roulette, randomly aiming to see who he would hit. The defense said Garcia Zarate found the gun wrapped around a t-shirt on the pier, and that it accidentally went off when he tried to unwrap it.
In a police interrogation, however, Garcia Zarate admitted to shooting the weapon but said he was aiming at a seal. He told police he then put the gun back down and stepped on it, causing it to discharge on its own before fleeing the scene.
Article inspired by NYDailyNews // Jury acquits Mexican immigrant in San Francisco murder of Kathryn Steinle