Pier killing suspect, in jailhouse interview, admits firing gun 
 
 The suspect arrested last week in the death of Kathryn Steinle on Pier 14 admitted to the killing and said he found a gun moments before he fired the shot that hit the 32-year-old woman. 
 
 Francisco Sanchez, 45, spoke in broken English to KGO-TV reporter Cornell Barnard during a Sunday afternoon jailhouse interview, in which Sanchez cryptically touched on the events leading to Wednesday’s slaying. 
 
 “Did you shoot Kate Steinle, the lady that was down on Pier 14?” Barnard asked Sanchez. 
 
 “Yes,” he replied. 
 
 Through a series of tangled words, Sanchez appeared to say that he found the gun wrapped in a shirt on a bench after he had taken sleeping pills that he found in a trash bin. 
 
 “I hear the boom, boom three times,” he told KGO TV. 
 
 A source familiar with the investigation said last week that Sanchez admitted to killing Steinle, but said he was at the pier to shoot at sea lions. When he realized around 6:30 p.m. that he had shot the Pleasanton native, Sanchez threw the gun into the bay and ran off, the source said. 
 
 The suspect was captured along the Embarcadero shortly after the killing. Steinle died a few hours later at San Francisco General Hospital. 
 
 Sanchez may be formally charged Monday when the case is turned over to the San Francisco district attorney’s office. He is being held on suspicion of murder in county lockup. 
 
 The case has drawn national attention after it was revealed that Sanchez was an undocumented immigrant who had been deported five times and has a rap sheet of seven felonies. 
 
 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said that San Francisco sheriff’s deputies released Sanchez from jail in April, despite asking that they be notified before his release, so they could deport him. 
 
 The Sheriff’s Department, though, said it followed its own “no-holds ICE policy,” which states that it does not honor immigration detention requests from federal officials. 
 
 The department’s policy is an expansion on a citywide ordinance, and a 2013 law passed through the state Legislature, saying only immigrants facing serious felonies can be held for federal immigration officials. Such requests are treated as voluntary, according to the law. 
 
 Sanchez has been convicted of seven felonies, four of which were drug related, and the most recent for re-entering the country after deportation. Sanchez was serving time in federal prison before immigration officials brought him to San Francisco to clear an outstanding warrant for marijuana possession. 
 
 The drug charge was tossed out on March 27, and after deputies checked to make sure there was no legal basis to hold him, Sanchez was released. 
 
 The reason he kept coming back to the United States, he told KGO, was that he was “looking for the jobs in the restaurant or roofing, landscaping or construction” businesses. 
 
 Sanchez, looking despondent during the interview, appeared to be remorseful and said he wanted to apologize for what happened. 
 
 Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky ||||| Authorities are investigating whether a gun associated with a Bureau of Land Management employee was used in the fatal shooting of a young woman on a tourist-heavy San Francisco pier, an agency spokesperson said. 
 
 "The matter is under investigation, and law enforcement is working to confirm the origin of the weapon," the spokesperson said in a statement. 
 
 Sources familiar with the investigation say the gun belonged to a federal agent and may have been stolen recently. It is unclear whether the firearm was a government-issued service weapon or a personally owned gun. 
 
 A lawyer for suspect Francisco Sanchez said at a Tuesday arraignment hearing that Sanchez meant the victim, Kate Steinle, 32, no harm. 
 
 "There is no motive whatsoever for this defendant to have caused any harm to the deceased," public defender Matt Gonzalez said in court. "He did not know her." 
 
 Gonzalez said it is "very likely that this was an accidental shooting." 
 
 Sanchez, 45, pleaded not guilty to murder and was held on $5 million bail, according to court records. He has been charged with one count of murder with enhancements for the use of a firearm, according to court records. 
 
 Sanchez will be back in court July 27, according to court records. 
 
 Earlier this week, Sanchez told ABC station KGO-TV in a jailhouse interview that he started wandering on Pier 14 Wednesday, July 1 after taking sleeping pills he found in a dumpster. He said he then picked up a gun that he found and it went off. 
 
 Courtesy of Steinle family 
 
 The case has sparked a debate about illegal immigration because Sanchez, an undocumented immigrant, has been deported several times to his native Mexico and Immigration and Customs Enforcement blamed the San Francisco police for not honoring an immigration detainer earlier in the year. 
 
 Sanchez has five previous convictions for re-entry after deportation, according to court records. He was on probation in Texas at the time of the shooting and served federal time for sneaking back into the country. 
 
 In an exclusive jailhouse interview, a KGO-TV reporter asked the alleged gunman, "Did you keep coming back to San Francisco because you knew that they wouldn't actively look for you to deport you?" 
 
 Sanchez responded, "Yes." 
 
 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had said in a statement that Sanchez was turned over to the San Francisco Police Department this past March on an outstanding drug warrant, and that the department requested that police notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement prior to his release so ICE officers could make arrangements to take custody. 
 
 However, the San Francisco Sheriff's Department said that it had no "legal basis" to hold Sanchez based on a federal immigration detainer, according to the Associated Press. A lawyer for the sheriff's department told the AP the city only turns over illegal immigrants if there's an active warrant for their arrest, so on April 15, after the local drug case closed, Sanchez was released. 
 
 In a statement Monday, San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee said the city's sanctuary policy "should not create a safe harbor for convicted, violent felons." 
 
 "I am concerned about the circumstances that led to the release of Mr. Sanchez," Lee's statement added. "All agencies involved, federal and local, need to conduct quick, thorough and objective reviews of their own departmental policies and the decisions they made in this case." 
 
 The San Francisco police union spoke out against the sanctuary policy, writing on its Facebook page Monday. 
 
 "A young innocent woman has been murdered in cold blood," the statement said. "He is an illegal alien not an undocumented immigrant and if he was where he belonged (Mexico) this innocent victim would still be alive." ||||| SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A man arrested in the seemingly random fatal shooting of a woman at a San Francisco pier admitted in a jailhouse interview that he shot her, but said it was an accident. 
 
 Francisco Sanchez, 45, told KGO-TV Sunday n a mix of Spanish and English that he found a gun wrapped inside a shirt while he was sitting on a bench at the pier and smoking a cigarette. 
 
 "So I picked it up and ... it started to fire on its own," Sanchez said, adding that he heard three shots go off. 
 
 He appeared confused and sometimes spoke incoherently during the interview, and said he has poor vision and was under the influence of sleeping pills at the time of the shooting. 
 
 "All I want to say is that in the courts, I want them to give me the punishment I deserve and get it over with as soon as possible," Sanchez said during the roughly 45-minute interview. 
 
 Kathryn Steinle, 32, was gunned down while out for an evening stroll at Pier 14 with her father and a family friend on Wednesday. Police said witnesses heard no argument or dispute before the shooting, suggesting it was a random attack. 
 
 Witnesses at the popular waterfront attraction snapped photos of Sanchez immediately after the shooting, and the images helped police make the arrest while he was walking on a sidewalk a few blocks away. 
 
 The shooting has drawn national attention and criticism of the city's sanctuary ordinance after federal officials revealed that Sanchez has seven felony convictions and was deported five times to his native Mexico. 
 
 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had turned Sanchez over to authorities in San Francisco on March 26 on an outstanding drug warrant. 
 
 The Sheriff's Department released Sanchez on April 15 after the San Francisco district attorney's office declined to prosecute him for what authorities said was a decade-old marijuana possession case. 
 
 ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said the agency had issued a detainer for Sanchez, requesting notification of his release and that he stays in custody until immigration authorities could pick him up. The detainer was not honored, she said. 
 
 Freya Horne, counsel for the San Francisco Sheriff's Department, said Friday that federal detention requests are not sufficient to hold someone. Under the city's sanctuary ordinance, people in the country illegally aren't handed over to immigration officials unless there's a warrant for their arrest. 
 
 Sanchez said he returned to the U.S. after being deported because he found better-paying jobs in the country than in Mexico. ||||| San Francisco (CNN) Kate Steinle was walking on a busy pier in San Francisco with her father when there was a single popping sound in the air. 
 
 She fell to the ground, struck by a bullet, the victim of what police say appears to be a random killing. 
 
 The man accused of firing the deadly shot -- 45-year-old Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez -- is an undocumented immigrant, a repeat felon who has been deported five times to Mexico, according to immigration officials. 
 
 It would have been six, a federal law enforcement source told CNN, except authorities in San Francisco wanted him on a drug-related warrant. 
 
 So U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which had Lopez-Sanchez in its custody in March after his release from federal prison, turned him over to San Francisco deputies. ICE said they requested an immigration detainer, asking that the agency be notified before Lopez-Sanchez was released. 
 
 But San Francisco is a city that doesn't honor such requests and the sheriff's department released him. Freya Horne, chief legal counsel to the San Francisco County Sheriff, told CNN that he was let go because there was no legal cause to detain the suspect. 
 
 On Wednesday evening, he shot the 31-year-old Steinle at Pier 14 once in her upper body, according to police. He was found about a mile away an hour later and arrested. CNN could not determine on Friday if he has an attorney. 
 
 Family: She was loving, smart, beautiful 
 
 Steinle's father told the San Francisco Chronicle there was one pop and his daughter fell to the ground. 
 
 Video shows several people trying to help the young woman. 
 
 Kate Steinle 
 
 "She just kept saying, 'Dad, help me, help me,'" Liz Sullivan, the victim's mother, told CNN affiliate KRON 
 
 Steinle, a medical device salesperson, died at San Francisco General Hospital. Sullivan said her heart stopped twice on the way to the hospital and she died during surgery. 
 
 "She fought for her life," Sullivan said. "They said how strong she was but they just couldn't save her." 
 
 Family members called her loving, smart and beautiful. Her cousin said she loved her mother and father "more than anything." 
 
 Several of the dozen or more people on the pedestrian pier took photos of the suspect and showed them to police. 
 
 Suspect had seven felony convictions 
 
 ICE said it turned Lopez-Sanchez over to San Francisco authorities on March 26 for an outstanding drug warrant. The agency requested an immigration detainer, but Horne said San Francisco officials believe that violates Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. 
 
 The sheriff's office said, "When Mr. Lopez-Sanchez was booked into the jail, there was no active Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) warrant or judicial order of removal for him." 
 
 The department would have returned Lopez-Sanchez if there had been a court order or warrant, it said. 
 
 Charges were dropped March 27 but Lopez-Sanchez was held until April 15 while the sheriff's office determined there were no other warrants for his arrest and he had completed his federal prison sentence. 
 
 According to KRON, San Francisco's policy on undocumented immigrants "states that a law enforcement official shall not detain an individual on the basis of a civil immigration detainer after that individual becomes eligible for release from custody." 
 
 The federal law enforcement source told CNN the sheriff's department "didn't even need to hold him. They simply could have notified that they were going to release him and we would have gotten him." 
 
 Police said Lopez-Sanchez last lived in Texas, where he was on probation. ICE said Lopez-Sanchez has seven felony convictions, four for drug offenses. His most recent deportation was in 2009. 
 
 He was released from federal prison in March after serving several years for felony re-entry after deportation. 
 
 Lopez-Sanchez is in San Francisco County Jail and faces a homicide charge. ICE has requested another immigration detainer.
– Another twist in the Francisco Sanchez case: The gun that the murder suspect claims he found wrapped in a T-shirt on a bench belonged to a federal agent and was stolen in a recent car break-in, sources tell the San Francisco Chronicle. The sources say the firearm wasn't the agent's official gun, and ABC News reports that the Bureau of Land Management is investigating whether the gun belonged to one of its employees. Sanchez, who claims the gun went off accidentally when he picked it up, killing 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle, pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder yesterday, the AP reports. Sanchez has been deported from the US five times, and San Francisco's decision not to turn him over to federal authorities for deportation when a drug charge was dropped in April has been strongly criticized by lawmakers and presidential candidates, including Hillary Clinton, who told CNN yesterday that the "city made a mistake, not to deport someone that the federal government strongly felt should be deported." At yesterday's hearing, Sanchez's public defender said the shooting appeared accidental and argued that the media should look at the "ubiquitous nature of guns in our society" instead of the immigration issue, the Chronicle reports.