A man has been charged with felony animal cruelty after investigators found a dead cat in a bag in the Bay while looking for a gun related to the fatal shooting of a woman on a San Francisco pier earlier this month, San Francisco Animal Care and Control officials said today.
San Francisco resident Adrian Dumont, 34, pleaded not guilty to the charge Tuesday and will return to court on July 27, according to district attorney’s office spokesman Max Szabo.
In the days after the July 1 fatal shooting of San Francisco resident and Pleasanton native Kathryn Steinle at Pier 14, investigators were searching the water near the pier for the gun used in the killing when they came across a floating bag, animal control officials said.
The bag contained a dead male 2-year-old brown tabby named Kazuma that was tied to a 10-pound weight. A microchip found in the cat led investigators to Dumont, who owned the cat, animal control officials said.
Police eventually found the gun believed to be used in the Steinle killing. The gun belonged to a U.S. Bureau of Land Management law enforcement ranger who had it stolen from his vehicle while in San Francisco.
Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez has been arrested and charged in the shooting of Steinle. The case has brought national attention to San Francisco’s immigration policies, which prohibit law enforcement officials from keeping someone in custody for an immigration detainer when they would otherwise be eligible for release.
Lopez-Sanchez is an undocumented immigrant who had been deported from the U.S. five times, but was released from custody in San Francisco despite a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer request.
Dan McMenamin and Hannah Albarazi, Bay City News
