Kate Steinle

Passions

American crime victim, graduated from Amador Valley High School and earned a communications degree from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. She was employed at Medtronic in San Francisco and was living on Beale Street, close to Pier 14, the site of the shooting. While walking with her father and a friend along Pier 14 in the Embarcadero district of San Francisco, on 1 July 2015, she was shot by Jose Inez Garcia Zarate, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who had previous drug related convictions an had been deported five times, during 1994 to 2009. He initially claimed that he fired at a sea lion, then that he fired accidentally while picking up the gun which he claimed he had found moments before, wrapped in cloth beneath the bench on which he was sitting. The shot ricocheted off the concrete deck of the pier striking the victim in the back. Steinle died two hours later in hospital as a result of her injuries. His trial began on 13 October 2017, with charges of first-degree murder, being a felon in possession of a firearm and possession of illegal narcotics. On 30 November 2017, after five days of deliberations, the jury acquitted Zarate of all murder and manslaughter charges, but convicted him of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Link to Wikipedia biography