Killing of Kate Steinle

On July 1, 2015, 32-year-old Kathryn "Kate" Steinle was shot and killed while walking with her father and a friend along Pier 14 in the Embarcadero district of San Francisco. She was hit in the back by a single bullet. The man who fired the gun, José Inez García Zárate, said he had found it moments before, wrapped in cloth beneath a bench on which he was sitting, and that when he picked it up the weapon went off. The shot ricocheted off the concrete deck of the pier and struck the victim, who was about 90 feet (27m) away. Steinle died two hours later in a hospital as a result of her injuries.

On November 30, 2017, after five days of deliberations, a jury acquitted García Zárate of all murder and manslaughter charges, and federal manslaughter and assault charges were dropped due to lack of evidence. He was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm, but that conviction was overturned on appeal on August 30, 2019.

García Zárate's immigration status made the shooting controversial and led to political criticism of San Francisco's status as a sanctuary city, as García Zárate is an illegal immigrant residing in the United States who had previously been deported five times. Donald Trump, at the time a presidential candidate, cited García Zárate in support of his proposal to deport criminal illegal immigrants living in the United States, and mentioned Steinle during his acceptance speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention.