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With his lower lip quivering with emotion and a packed courtroom hanging on every word, a father recounted the final moments of a daughter's life as they walked on a summer evening stroll on a San Francisco pier more than two years ago.



Jim Steinle told the court that he and a family friend were visiting his daughter Kate Steinle in San Francisco on July 1, 2015. After a late lunch at her favorite restaurant, the trio went for a walk on the pier on San Francisco's popular waterfront.



The elder Steinle said he heard a loud "bang," and his daughter collapsed in his arms, saying "help me, Dad."



Jim Steinle said when she fell to the ground, her eyes were closed and she had difficulty breathing.



"I couldn't figure out what was wrong." He said, choking back tears. "She didn't have any health problems."



After he rolled Kate Steinle on her side, he lifted her blouse and discovered a bullet hole with little blood. Paramedics arrived shortly afterward, and she was declared dead at a nearby hospital.

A "freakish ricochet" after a stolen gun went off in the hands of the homeless man who found it led to the accidental shooting of Kathryn Steinle as she walked on Pier 14 with her father two years ago, according to Matt Gonzalez, chief attorney for the public defender's office.

In opening statements today in the trial of Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, 45, who is charged with second-degree murder in Steinle's fatal July 1, 2015 shooting, prosecutor Diana Garcia said he fired at Steinle or others

in the crowd deliberately.


Steinle, a 32-year-old who lived in San Francisco' South Beach neighborhood and worked at Medtronic, was walking on the pier with her father and a family friend around 6:23 p.m. after a meal at the nearby Ferry

Building when she was struck in the back by a single bullet and killed.

Gonzalez told jurors that Garcia Zarate found the gun beneath a seat at the pier where he was sitting that evening.

When he bent to pick up the heavy object, which was wrapped in a t-shirt, the gun went off and Garcia Zarate, startled, threw it in the water and left the area quickly, not knowing that anyone had been hit by the bullets, Gonzalez said.

He was arrested around an hour later about a mile away, after witnesses reported seeing him leaving the scene. The gun used in the shooting, which had been stolen from a Bureau of Land Management Agent's car

a few days earlier, was later recovered from the water.

Garcia brandished the murder weapon in front of jurors and argued the gun, a .40 caliber Sig Sauer, was in good condition and is designed to be difficult to fire accidentally.

"It's a very reliable, high quality gun," Garcia told jurors.

"It's not the kind of gun that's going to go off by accident."

"He knew he had a gun, he meant to conceal it, he meant to shoot people on Pier 14 and he ended up killing Kate Steinle," Garcia said.

Gonzalez, however, said the gun is designed for use as an emergency backup weapon by law enforcement. It does not have a safety switch and is known to have a "hair trigger," making it "inherently dangerous" for

anyone without training to handle it, he said.

There is no evidence that Garcia Zarate stole the gun, that he possessed it in the days leading up to the shooting or that anyone saw him holding it prior to the shooting, Gonzalez said.

Nor did he have a violent history or the kind of firearms experience necessary to have struck Steinle from a distance of around 90 feet given that ballistics evidence shows the bullet bounced off the ground before

hitting her, Gonzalez said.

"Only a freakish ricochet which altered the course of the bullet caused this tragedy," Gonzalez said. "There has never been a ricochet charged as a murder in San Francisco history. An expert marksman couldn't make this

shot if he tried."

Garcia argued that the ricochet could have occurred because Garcia Zarate was aiming at Steinle or other people in the area but fired before the barrel was all the way up and in position.

Garcia Zarate, who speaks little English, confessed to the shooting in an interview with police but also gave confusing and sometimes inaccurate statements, such as misstating the distance between himself and

Steinle and saying he walked past her when he didn't.

He gave no motive for the shooting, saying only "I don't know" and "I don't remember" repeatedly, although he did at one point suggest he was aiming at a seal or other animal. Gonzalez said that he repeatedly told police in the interview that the gun went off in his hands and that he threw it in the water to make it stop.

Garcia Zarate's trial has drawn national attention because of its ties to controversy over Sanctuary City policies used by San Francisco and other cities that limit the cooperation of local law enforcement with federal

immigration authorities. He had been deported five times.

San Francisco officials had released Garcia Zarate, an undocumented immigrant, from jail months before the shooting after a minor drug charge was dismissed without notifying federal immigration authorities, as is the city's practice for most cases.

Garcia did not mention Garcia Zarate's immigration status this morning but Gonzalez did, portraying him as a poor homeless man with a second-grade education who largely kept to himself for fear of being

deported.

"If this had happened to a college student, to a Swedish tourist, would they be charged with murder?" Gonzalez asked the jury?

Evidence began today with brief testimony from Steinle's father, who was present when she was killed, and will continue tomorrow morning.

Garcia Zarate remains in custody without bail during the trial.

