George Gascon, the San Francisco district attorney who failed to win a murder conviction in the trial of a homeless illegal immigrant charged in the shooting death of Kate Steinle in 2015, announced Tuesday that he won't seek re-election.
Gascon, who clashed with candidate Donald Trump over the case -- and in 2017 referred to President Trump as a tweeting "madman" who ignited a media frenzy -- cited the need to care for his 90-year-old mother in Southern California as his reason for not running again after his second term expires next year, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
“At this time, I simply cannot be the son I want to be and seek a third term,” Gascón said in a statement. “My career means a great deal to me. But success in the world with a family in chaos is not a choice I am willing to make.”
Gascon was heavily criticized by Trump and conservatives after the July 2015 fatal shooting of Steinle, a 32-year-old San Francisco resident who was fatally shot while walking along the city's waterfront with her father and a friend.
Soon after her death, it was revealed that her alleged killer, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, 45, a Mexican national, had been released from a San Francisco jail under the city’s "sanctuary city" law rather than being turned over to immigration authorities.
He had been deported five times prior to Steinle’s death.
Gascon accused Trump of seizing on the case to push an anti-immigrant agenda, accusing Trump of instigating a media circus around Garcia Zarate’s trial.
Prosecutors argued that Garcia Zarate intentionally killed Steinle on Pier 14. Defense lawyers said that shooting was accidental and the bullet ricocheted off the ground and hit Steinle.
