Día Delos Muertos Celebration

What Ever Happened to Jose Zarate?

Smash words Edition

Jason Gabriel Kondrath

Día Delos Muertos Celebration What Ever Happened to Jose Zarate? Copyright © 2020 Smash
words Edition by Jason Gabriel Kondrath All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the author.

ISBN: 9781005705879
 Día Delos Muertos Celebration

What Ever Happened to Jose Zarate?

Trump officially decided to run for president as a Republican in 2016, using the motto “Make
America Great Again.” In his announcement speech in June 2015, Trump took a tough stance
against illegal immigration and promised to build a wall on the U.S.–Mexico border if elected
president.

On July 1, 2015, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate shot 32-year-old Kathryn Michelle Steinle in the back
as she walked with her father on San Francisco’s Pier 14. Her dying words were “Help me,
daddy.”

Garcia Zarate, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, who’d been deported from the U.S. five times
and had seven felony convictions, including for heroin possession and manufacturing narcotics,
quickly admitted to firing the gun.

For Trump, Steinle’s death—was the most convenient of tragedies.

 
Trump was ranked seventh in the Republican field, according to the RealClearPolitics polling
average but after the shooting shot up to No. 1 in less than a month.
Ten days later he’d overtaken Jeb Bush among GOP contenders.
 
“Something happened in July to send Trump’s numbers soaring,” noted David Frum in the
Atlantic that month. “That may have been the murder of Kathryn Steinle.”
 
There was no question.

Two days after Steinle’s killing, then-candidate Trump came out with a statement describing the
young woman’s death as “yet another example of why we must secure our border immediately.”
 
He added, “This is an absolutely a disgraceful situation and I am the only one that can fix it.
Nobody else has the guts to even talk about it. That won’t happen if I become president.” 

Whereas Trump had previously been criticized for describing undocumented immigrants as
violent criminals, Steinle’s death confirmed that popular view, suddenly the narrative of the
primary in his favor.

“This man, or this animal, that shot that wonderful, that beautiful woman in San Francisco, this
guy was pushed back by Mexico,” Trump told CNN on July 8. “Mexico pushes back people
across the border that are criminals, that are drug dealers.”

Who was Zapata?

Within days, it also came out that the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department had refused to tell
federal immigration officials when Garcia Zarate—who would have been deported upon his
return to federal custody—was scheduled to be released from jail, instead allowing him to go
free a few months prior to Steinle’s killing.

(Until recently, reports have referred to Garcia Zarate by what his lawyer says is an alias, Juan
Francisco Lopez-Sanchez), frequently done to hide a person extensive criminal record. Jose Ines
Garcia Zarate should never have been in the United States. And now that he was, Mexico refused
to accept Zarate (a Mexican citizen), who was a felon in both countries.

Where did he get the gun?

On June 27, 2015, two months after Garcia Zarate was released from custody, a .40-caliber SIG
Sauer semi-automatic pistol was stolen from a car belonging to officer John Woychowski, a
Bureau of Land Management ranger.

BLM ranger John Woychowski’s .40-caliber Sig Sauer handgun has received far less attention,
and how it conveniently ended up in Garcia Zarate’s hands remains a mystery.
 
Leaving an unsecured gun in your car is not only against his own agencies policy -but California
State Law. As a ranger he would have known that.
 
Woychowski’s reason for even being in San Francisco the evening of June 27, 2015, is even
contradictory.

Woychowski has said he left El Centro, California, near the Mexican border, on June 27. He was
on his way to an official assignment in Helena, Montana, that was supposed to begin around July
4.
 
According to attorneys familiar with the case, Woychowski told investigators he left on a day off
and drove up the California coast — over 600 miles — before stopping near the Embarcadero in
San Francisco for dinner at almost 10 p.m.

When Woychowski returned to the vehicle, he found it burglarized, with the backpack
containing Woychowski’s duty weapon and ammunition missing. It had been stashed under the
driver’s seat.

Defense attorney Matt Gonzalez said the police department’s treatment of the ranger during its
homicide investigation, “The investigation in this case is going to be criticized,” he said.
“[Police] adhered to an age-old custom of protecting their own. Part of that is the kid gloves they
treated this ranger with.”

That is not a locked compartment. It was clearly a violation of criminal law at the time that it
happened. “Defense attorney Gonzalez says that wasn’t the only crime. Woychowski had a
second handgun in the spare tire wheel well in the trunk of his car that Gonzalez says was also
unsecured.
It wasn’t stolen. So Woychowski didn’t mention it to police investigators, and they didn’t ask,
Gonzalez said.

The gun was left loaded and unsecured—a violation of agency policy—and found in a backpack.

And Garcia Zarate just happened to break into the one car that had not one, but two unsecured
guns in it. He stole the gun but was not charged with stealing. Or being a felon in possession of a
handgun.

“Woychowski was worried that he was going to be prosecuted,” Gonzalez said, referring to notes
of an interview SFPD conducted with Woychowski. “He wanted assurances that he wasn’t going
to be, and they gave it to him.”

Regardless, it is undeniable that Jose Ines Garcia Zarate used that pistol on July 1, 2015, and that
a bullet fired from the gun struck and killed Kate Steinle -a white woman.

And the social ramifications were damning, -the worst thing a person of color could do.

In 2016, the Steinle family filed a wrongful death suit against the city of San Francisco over its
release of Garcia Zarate; that lawsuit was dismissed earlier this year, but the family is appealing
the case.

Attorneys representing Kathryn Steinle’s family in a civil lawsuit confirmed,

“If the San Francisco Police Department and the district attorney wanted to, they could have
pressed charges,” civil attorney Alison Cordova said in an interview. “From what we know, John
Woychowski did not have his gun in a locked compartment in the vehicle. It was in a backpack,
unlocked in the vehicle.

Their federal lawsuit, which accuses the Bureau of Land Management ranger of negligence for
allegedly leaving his gun unsecured, has been allowed to go forward.

For his part, Mayor Ed Lee wrote to San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi urging him “to
rescind [the] policy [that led to Garcia Zarate’s release] immediately, in the interest of public
safety.”

Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi would be voted out of office in November 2015 after facing criticism
over his handling of the Steinle case and other scandals.
 
His successor Vicki Hennessy said during the campaign that there was “room for notification—
not detention, but notification—when we have someone in our custody that has a felony.”
 
8/10/2017 Ultimately, Hennessy and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors agreed to a half-
reform that would allow the sheriff’s department to notify ICE if a detainee had committed a
violent or serious felony in the past seven years or three or more lower-grade felonies in the
previous five years.
Kates Law passed in the House of Representatives three weeks after Steinle’s death. But it didn’t
stand a chance in the U.S. Senate.

What about the officer who left his gun in the car that Zarate had stolen???

Woychowski faced neither discipline nor criminal charges for failing to secure his weapon — a
misdemeanor under California law. 

During the trial, it was discovered that Woychowski was promoted, Gonzalez brought up the
promotion in court on Thursday, after he learned about it in an interview with KQED. It was not
publicized.

The email thread and the promotions it celebrated were confirmed by current and former BLM
employees who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are either not authorized to speak
on the record or because they fear retaliation from the federal government, including the Bureau
of Land Management and the U.S. departments of the Interior and Justice, which are all involved
in the criminal and civil litigation arising from Steinle’s death.

“Your honor, he got promoted after the shooting,” Gonzalez said. “It’s not just lack of discipline.
They [BLM] have zero credibility as an agency.”

Five months after Kathryn Steinle was slain on San Francisco’s waterfront, the U.S. Bureau of
Land Management promoted Woychowski.
 
He was the law enforcement ranger whose unsecured gun was used in the murder of Kate
Steinly, according to an internal BLM email obtained by radio station KQED.

Here’s the bottom line, it is under great suspicion the circumstances that Zarate had obtained his
gun, and that the officer in question lacked common sense, and in any event, if not charged or
terminated, should never have been promoted.

A federal court appointed psychologist has ruled that Jose Garcia-Zarate was mentally
incompetent to stand trial on a gun possession charge related to the 2015 slaying of Kate Steinle
on the San Francisco waterfront.

February 14, 2020

In a one-page order issued Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabra ruled that “the
evaluator has concluded that the defendant, because of mental illness that is not presently being
treated, is not competent to stand trial. The evaluator’s report has been provided to the
government and the defense.”

1. Trump a joke as Presidential hopeful ran under Build the Wall

2. Jose Zarate, an illegal alien and multiple felons just released from local custody, killed a
white woman Kate Steinly, with a gun he stole from a police officer
3. John Woychowski a ranger, took a road trip 600 miles away for no apparent reason with
two loaded and unsecured guns kept in his car. This is illegal in California and a violation
of his own agencies policy.
4. Kate Steinly was shot and killed as a result.
5. The Ranger was promoted according to secret emails leaked from within the agency.
6. President Trump who was bankrupt from his Atlantic City Casinos had declared
bankruptcy 6 times previously suddenly became president.
7. Trump has no debt, and lives on a gated island next to Obama.
8. The current status of Zarate is unknown, but found incompetent, you can assume he has
been quietly re-released into California and is attending an out-patient drug treatment
center somewhere on skid-row.