The gun used in the seemingly random slaying of a woman on a San Francisco pier belonged to a federal agent, a law enforcement official briefed on the matter said Tuesday. The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the case and spoke on condition of anonymity, said a police check of the weapon’s serial number shows it belonged to a federal agent. The official declined to elaborate further.
The San Francisco Police Department, which is investigating the case, declined to comment. The revelation was the latest dramatic twist in a tragic case that has become a new flashpoint in the country’s debate over immigration policies.
The suspected gunman, Juan Francisco Lopez Sanchez, has been deported to his native Mexico five times and is suspected of living in the United States illegally when Kathryn Steinle, 32, was gunned down last week while on an evening stroll with her father along San Francisco’s popular waterfront area.
Sanchez pleaded not guilty Tuesday to first-degree murder.
The mind boggles.
He told two television stations who interviewed him in jail that he found the gun used in Steinle’s killing wrapped in a shirt on the pedestrian pier she was walking on. Sanchez said the gun went off in his hands, and his public defender, Matt Gonzalez, said Tuesday that the San Francisco woman’s death appeared accidental.
I’m sure that makes her family feel much, much better. As I wrote here at the Tatler the other day: “A government that refuses to take the nation’s borders seriously and refuses to protect American citizens is evil.”
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