SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — A Mexican man accused of killing a woman on a San Francisco pier in a case that set off a national debate over immigration policy brought the gun and deliberately shot it at people, “playing his own secret version of Russian roulette,” a prosecutor said in her closing argument Monday.
Jose Ines Garcia Zarate was playing his own game, San Francisco Deputy District Attorney Diana Garcia told jurors, deriding as implausible the defense argument that he accidentally shot a weapon he didn’t know was a firearm. Defense attorneys were scheduled to present closing arguments later.
Garcia Zarate had been deported five times and was wanted for a sixth deportation when Kate Steinle was fatally shot in the back while walking with her father on the pier in July 2015. Garcia Zarate did not deny shooting Steinle but said it was an accident.
The shooting happened during the presidential campaign and touched off a fierce debate over the country’s immigration policies. San Francisco’s “sanctuary city” law bars local officials from cooperating with federal attempts to deport those in the country illegally, and the city had released Garcia Zarate from custody despite a federal detention request.
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