Police arrest 2 in SF killing and reveal gun had been stolen from cop

A man killed last month in the Mission District was shot by a gun that had been stolen from a city police officer’s personal car. A man killed last month in the Mission District was shot by a gun that had been stolen from a city police officer’s personal car. Photo: Filipa Ioannou Photo: Filipa Ioannou Image 1 of / 43 Caption Close Police arrest 2 in SF killing and reveal gun had been stolen from cop 1 / 43 Back to Gallery

A man slain in San Francisco’s Mission District last month was shot by two teenagers wielding a gun that had been stolen three days earlier from a city police officer’s personal car, officials said Wednesday.

Investigators announced the arrests, made Monday and Tuesday, of Erick Garcia Pineda and Daniel Cruz, both 18-year-old city residents, on suspicion of murdering Abel Enrique Esquivel Jr. on Aug. 15.

According to a GoFundMe page seeking to help the victim’s family, Esquivel, 23, was shot about 2 a.m. while returning home from his night shift at a market, after he resisted “two hooded individuals” who tried to rob him.

Officers responding to the 3200 block of 26th Street found Esquivel wounded, officials said. Police determined he had been shot a block away, near South Van Ness Avenue. He was taken to San Francisco General Hospital, where he died the next day.

Investigators said the gun that killed Esquivel was a personal firearm owned by an unnamed officer. It had been stolen Aug. 12 from his car at an undisclosed location in San Francisco, which in recent years has seen an epidemic of vehicle break-ins.

Officials did not say whether the gun was properly secured and the car locked. Martin Halloran, president of the police officers’ union, said the officer did not know the weapon had been stolen until after the shooting.

“There were no visible signs of the burglary, and the officer did not realize that the vehicle had been broken into, nor that the firearm had been stolen,” Halloran said. “The officer, a highly decorated veteran, is devastated.”

Department officials said they opened an internal investigation into the “circumstance of the theft.”

Guns stolen from law enforcement vehicles have been used in a number of shootings in recent years in the Bay Area. In 2015, a gun stolen in San Francisco from a car belonging to a U.S. Bureau of Land Management agent was used to kill Kathryn Steinle, 32, on Pier 14.

A few months later, a gun stolen from a U.S. immigration agent’s rental car in San Francisco was used to kill artist Antonio Ramos, 27, as he painted an antiviolence mural in Oakland.

A San Francisco police bulletin in October 2015 decreed that officers who must leave firearms in unattended vehicles secure them in the locked trunk, out of public view.

“If a member is unable to secure a firearm in a vehicle as described above, the member shall not leave a firearm in an unattended vehicle,” the bulletin states. “Under no circumstances shall any firearm be left unattended in a vehicle overnight.”

In the aftermath of last month’s gun theft, Pineda, Cruz and 24-year-old Jesus Perez-Araujo, who was also arrested this week, went on a crime spree, police said.

They committed a series of Mission District robberies between Aug. 13 and Aug. 15, authorities said, and assaulted a victim on Mission Street just minutes after Esquivel was shot.

Pineda was jailed on suspicion of murder, robbery, conspiracy, burglary and attempted murder, and Cruz was booked on of suspicion of murder, conspiracy, robbery and possession of stolen property. They are both being held without bail.

Perez-Araujo was booked on suspicion of robbery, burglary and conspiracy, and is being held in lieu of $340,000 bail.

According to his family, Esquivel was a compassionate young man who volunteered at a community center in the Mission District.

Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VivianHo