Below, the accused Mexican illegal (left), earlier known by the alias Francisco Sanchez, admitted in a jailhouse confession that he shot Kate Steinle as she strolled on a popular San Francisco pier with her father.
The shooter is now addressed by the name Jose Ines Garcia Zarate and had been deported five times as a convicted felon. Authorities released him from a San Francisco jail several weeks before the shooting rather than contact ICE so he could be deported. The city’s sanctuary policy dictated no cooperation with the feds on immigration enforcement which allowed the Mexican to remain in the city and kill.
Even with the history of carnage, which includes the murders of three members of the Bologna family by an illegal alien gangster, San Francisco remain stuck on its dangerous sanctuary policy which puts diversity fawning ahead of public safety.
As San Francisco trial opens in killing of Kate Steinle, prosecutor says, ‘He meant to shoot’, SFgate.com, October 23, 2017The San Francisco murder case that ignited a national debate over immigration policy went to trial Monday with attorneys sparring not over politics but the case’s central legal question — whether the killer of Kate Steinle on Pier 14 intended to fire in her direction or accidentally shot a gun he said he found under a bench.
A city prosecutor said in her opening statement that Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, 45, brought the stolen pistol to the waterfront location, pointed it toward Steinle and pulled the trigger on July 1, 2015.
The public defender representing the Mexican citizen said he found the gun in a T-shirt on the pier moments before the shooting, and that after he unwrapped the bundle the gun discharged a bullet that ricocheted off the concrete and struck Steinle in the back.
By the afternoon, the trial’s first witness introduced the Steinle family’s heartbreak into the courtroom. The victim’s father spoke of the confusion he felt as his daughter spoke her final words: “Help me, Dad.”
The trial in front of Superior Court Judge Samuel Feng opened to broad interest fueled by the political firestorm that followed it. Garcia Zarate, who was homeless and had a record of drug crimes, was wanted for deportation by federal agents when his San Francisco jailers set him free 2½ months before the shooting under the city’s sanctuary laws.
But the job of the jury sitting at the Hall of Justice is to put aside those politics. It is Garcia Zarate’s intentions on the day he killed Steinle that could mean the difference between a conviction for second-degree murder or manslaughter, or an acquittal. [. . .]
Before the shooting, Garcia Zarate had been on track for a sixth deportation after serving 46 months in prison for felony re-entry into the country. But his course changed when he was transferred from federal custody to San Francisco jail in March 2015 on an old warrant alleging he fled marijuana charges in 1995.
When city prosecutors discharged the case, the Sheriff’s Department released Garcia Zarate despite a federal request to hold him for deportation. Then-Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi cited the city’s sanctuary policies, which limit local cooperation with immigration enforcement and seek to encourage undocumented people to feel comfortable having a relationship with city agencies.
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