The family of shooting victim Kathryn Steinle, a 31-year-old medical device saleswoman, contend in their suit that the city was negligent for failing to ensure that the alleged shooter, an undocumented Mexican immigrant who had been deported five times, had not returned to San Francisco for a fateful sixth time.
“Kate’s death was both foreseeable and preventable had the law enforcement agencies, officials and/or officers involved simply followed the laws, regulations and/or procedures which they swore to uphold,” the lawsuit says, according to Cable News Network (CNN).
The lawsuit also names the United States government as a defendant because the gun used in the slaying had been stolen from an Interior Department ranger’s car and may not have been properly secured.
“Kate’s fate was sealed when a U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management ranger failed to properly secure and/or store a government-issued firearm while it was left in an unoccupied vehicle in a high auto-theft neighborhood,” the lawsuit says.
The man accused of killing Steinle as she walked with her family on a walking path at Pier 14, 45-year-old Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, told authorities he found the gun as he walked along the waterfront and it fired inadvertently when he picked it up.
Steinle was struck once in the heart and died a short time later at San Francisco General Hospital.
The lawsuit claims she fell into her father’s arms and said, “Help me, Daddy,” before she was placed into an ambulance for the trip to the hospital.
Lopez-Sanchez has pleaded not guilty to all charges and is being held in lieu of $5 million bail.
But the case has taken on national dimensions because of its implications for U.S. immigration policy overall and as it relates to state rights.
Leading presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have made mention of the case as recently as last week, when Trump discussed Lopez-Sanchez’s immigration status during a speech in southern California.
San Francisco has its own policy called sanctuary, under which police are discouraged from relaying information about suspected undocumented immigrants to federal authorities unless U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials obtain a court order requiring that information to be burned over.
ICE had informally requested to be notified about Lopez-Sanchez’s case but had not obtained a court order, CNN said.
The controversy also is believed to have resulted in the defeat of San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi at the polls last November.
