Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, also know as Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, is a Mexican Illegal immigrant who has been deported from the United States numerous times made national news headlines in late October, 2017 after he was found not guilty in the murder of Kathryn Steinle.

Born and raised in Guanajuato, Mexico, Zarate was involved in a life of crime since a young age and became a drug trafficker who would eventually transport to the

United States.

Sanchez arrived to the U.S. sometime before 1991, the year he was convicted of his first drug charge in Arizona. In 1993, he was convicted three times in Washington state for felony heroin possession and manufacturing narcotics. Following another drug conviction and jail term, this time in Oregon, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) deported Sanchez in June 1994. However, Sanchez returned to the U.S. within two years and was convicted again of heroin possession in Washington state. He was deported for the second time in 1997. ^[1]

On February 2, 1998, Sanchez was deported for the third time, after reentering the U.S. through Arizona.

United States Border Patrol caught him six days later at a border crossing, and a federal court sentenced Sanchez to five years and three months in federal prison for unauthorized reentry. ^[1] Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), formerly INS, deported Sanchez in 2003 for his fourth deportation. However, he reentered the U.S. through the Texas border and got another federal prison sentence for reentry before being deported for the fifth time in June 2009. ^[1]

Less than three months after his fifth deportation, Sanchez was caught attempting to cross the border in Eagle Pass, Texas. He pleaded guilty to felony reentry; upon sentencing, a federal court recommended Sanchez be placed in "a federal medical facility as soon as possible." ^[1]

On March 26, 2015, at the request of the San Francisco Sheriff's Department, United States Bureau of Prisons (BOP) had turned Sanchez over to San Francisco authorities for an outstanding drug warrant. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had issued a detainer for Sanchez requesting that he be kept in custody until immigration authorities could pick him up.

As a sanctuary city, however, which limits cooperation with ICE only to cases where active charges against the immigrant are identified, San Francisco did not honor the detainer and released him, since they found no active warrant for his arrest. San Francisco officials transported Sanchez to San Francisco County Jail on March 26, 2015 to face a 20-year-old felony charge of selling and possessing marijuana after Sanchez completed his latest prison term in San Bernardino County for entering in the country without the proper documents. He was released from San Francisco County Jail on April 15, and had no outstanding warrants or judicial warrants, as confirmed by the San Francisco Sheriff's Department.

On July 1, 2015, Zarate fired a gun on Pier 14 in the Embarcadero district in San Francisco, California. The bullet struck 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle in the back, causing her to die two hours later at a hospital. A homeless man, Zarate was arrested and charged with murder. Because Lopez-Sanchez is an illegal immigrant from Mexico who had previously been deported, reportedly on five different occasions, the shooting sparked controversy and political debate over San Francisco's status as a sanctuary city.

At 6:30 p.m., a gunman, alleged to be Francisco Sanchez, fired three shots from a.40-caliber handgun at Pier 14, a tourist attraction area at the Embarcadero district. One of the bullets struck Steinle in the back and pierced her aorta. She collapsed to the floor while screaming for help to her father Jim, who was accompanying her at the pier. Jim Steinle performed CPR on her before paramedics arrived and sent her to an ambulance. She died two hours later at San Francisco General Hospital. Sanchez was arrested about an hour later one mile away from the pier and was booked into San Francisco County Jail on suspicion of murder. The shooting was believed by police to be random. Divers from a police boat found the gun in the bay later that night. The gun used by Sánchez was stolen from a Bureau of Land Management officer's vehicle on June 27, 2015 according to the Bureau of Land Management.

On Thursday, November 30th, 2017, after a trial that lasted close to two years, Zarate was found not guilty of the murder in the killing of Kathryn Steinle by the jury. He was convicted of a felon for possession of a firearm.

Garcia Zarate said he found the stolen gun wrapped in a shirt under a chair on a pedestrian pier and that the weapon accidentally fired when he picked it up.

The bullet ricocheted on the pier's concrete walkway before it struck Steinle.

His attorneys say the ricochet showed the shooting was an accident.

Much of the testimony during the trial has focused on ballistics experts.

Defense attorney Matt Gonzalez said in his closing remarks that he knows it's difficult to believe Garcia Zarate found an object that turned out to be a weapon that fired when he picked it up.

But he told jurors that Garcia Zarate had no motivation to kill Steinle and as awful as her death was, "nothing you do is going to fix that."

He urged jurors to pick apart the facts of the case, instead of swallowing a ludicrous narrative by the prosecution that relied on circumstantial evidence.