Kate Steinle SF Pier 14 Shooting Suspect Allegedly Used Federal Agent’s Gun
Francisco Sanchez, the illegal alien charged with the fatal shooting of Kathryn Steinle at Pier 14 on the San Francisco Embarcadero waterfront, allegedly used a gun belonging to a federal agent in the crime.
Several news agencies are reporting this latest development in the tragic, random shooting of Kate Steinle, 32, at the popular tourist destination on July 1.
In a jailhouse interview on Sunday with ABC7 News San Francisco, Sanchez admitted to the crime, but claims it was an accident. He said that while sitting on a park bench, he found a gun wrapped in a T-shirt and it accidentally went off when he picked it up.
The suspect is an illegal immigrant from Mexico who was previously deported five times and has multiple felonies on his U.S. rap sheet.
In a court arraignment today, Sanchez pleaded not guilty to murder and was ordered held on $5 million bail.
KRON 4 in San Francisco, among other outlets, is reporting on the firearm in question, although the details of this explosive allegation are still sketchy at this writing.
“KRON has learned that the gun used to kill a 32-year-old woman on San Francisco’s Pier 14 belonged to a federal agent. A Sig Sauer pistol was used in the fatal shooting, a source told KRON 4. The gun was recovered last Thursday in the bay by a police dive team. The source described the weapon as being an expensive, high-end, common police gun. Another source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN’s Sara Sidner that the gun belonged to a federal agent.”
The weapon was supposedly stolen from the federal agent in a June car burglary in downtown San Francisco, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. An anonymous law enforcement official told AP that “a police check of the weapon’s serial number shows it belonged to a federal agent.”
Apart from this bizarre allegation about a federal agent’s weapon, this case has ignited a nationwide debate about so-called sanctuary cities which decline to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. San Francisco is a sanctuary city, and as a result, the San Francisco County Sheriff apparently declined to turn the suspect over to Homeland Security for deportation number six when he was set free from jail in April after being taken into custody on a drug-related charge.
In a statement, the San Francisco police union declared that “A young innocent woman has been murdered in cold blood. He is an illegal alien not an undocumented immigrant and if he was where he belonged (Mexico) this innocent victim would still be alive.”
Source with knowledge of investigation says Gun used by illegal immigrant in #SF killing on #Pier14 belonged to a federal agent. Whoa.
— Sara Sidner (@sarasidnerCNN) July 8, 2015
An analysis of Immigration and Customs Enforcement data by the Center for Immigration Reform suggests that about 170,000 convicted criminal immigrants who have been ordered deported by a court are still at large in the U.S., while about 180,000 are here while their cases are still pending in the judicial system, Breitbart News reported.
As the Inquisitr previously detailed, more than 100 illegal immigrants released from detention by the federal government while they were awaiting deportation allegedly went on to commit murder in the U.S., according to the Obama administration’s own data.
The number of illegal alien felons removed from the U.S. has also reportedly decreased by 30 percent in 2015 under what the Obama administration has deemed prosecutorial discretion.
[image via Twitter]
