U.S. PIER KILLING SUSPECT

Trump slams verdict against illegal immigrant as ‘disgraceful’

SAN FRANCISCO

AN illegal immigrant from Mexico was acquitted of murder and manslaughter by a San Francisco jury on Thursday in the fatal shooting of a woman that Donald Trump used as a rallying cry against “sanctuary cities” during his presidential campaign.

Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, 45, who had been deported to Mexico five times since first entering the United States as a juvenile, was charged in the July 1, 2015, killing of Kate Steinle on a pier here.

Defence attorneys said Garcia Zarate found the gun and it accidentally discharged, the bullet ricocheting off the ground at the pier frequented by tourists before striking the woman.

Prosecutors had argued that Garcia Zarate intentionally fired the gun when he struck Steinle with a bullet.

The jury, while acquitting Garcia Zarate of murder, manslaughter and assault charges, found him guilty of the lesser charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm, said Max Szabo, a spokesman for the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office.

The sentence for that crime in California could range between 16 months and three years in prison.

The case became a lightning rod for

Trump and others in the push to halt illegal immigration and penalise so-called sanctuary