Sheridan Gorman spent the early morning hours on Thursday with friends, watching the skyline on the Loyola Beach Pier, prosecutors said, when she noticed someone hiding.
As the group started to run away, Jose Medina, 25, fired a gun, prosecutors alleged Monday, hitting the 18-year-old Loyola University Chicago student in the back while her friends took cover in a grassy area of the beach.
Though a full detention hearing was postponed because Medina is hospitalized with tuberculosis, Cook County prosecutors gave a brief account of the shooting that plunged the Rogers Park university into mourning and generated international headlines when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced it had lodged a detainer request asking Illinois officials not to release Medina, who is a Venezuelan national.
Medina is facing charges of murder, among other felonies, in the slaying of Gorman, who was a first-year student from Yorktown Heights, New York. He is scheduled to appear in court on Friday where his public defender will detail any mitigating circumstances.
Meanwhile, Judge Luciano Panici Jr. ordered Medina be kept in custody in the interim.
Medina’s arrest comes in a highly charged political atmosphere as Chicago is still reeling from the impact of Operation Midway Blitz, the Trump administration’s controversial, weekslong immigration enforcement operation.
In a press release, DHS reiterated its common denunciations of state and local sanctuary laws as area politicians weighed in, with local Republicans quick to blame Gov. JB Pritzker and his fellow Democrats for championing the state’s sanctuary policies, using them as a political cudgel in expressing outrage over Gorman’s killing.
On Monday, President Donald Trump was asked by reporters about the fatal shooting, calling it “devastating” and blaming the border policies of former Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration for allowing the suspect into the U.S.
“This person came in through the open door policy of Joe Biden, and we have others,” Trump said. “They’ve hurt our country. Just remember this: Joe Biden and that gang of radical left lunatics, some very smart, but radical left and bad ideology, sick people. These people have hurt our country very badly.”
Pritzker’s office, though, in a statement called on the Trump administration “to stop politicizing heinous tragedies and instead focus on real solutions, like reinstating federal funds to prevent violence that support our public safety efforts.”
Gorman’s family released a statement Sunday night after charges were announced, thanking law enforcement and those “who worked quickly” in the investigation and arrest. They previously said she “made people feel seen, safe, and loved simply by being who she was.”
“Their efforts matter. But this is not justice — it is the first step toward it,” the statement said. “This case must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of both state and federal law. There can be no gaps, no shortcuts, and no second chances that put others at risk. Accountability must be complete.”
Though political rhetoric focused on sanctuary laws, Medina’s past contact with local law enforcement appears to be limited to a shoplifting arrest in 2023.
Medina was released on a personal recognizance bond, as was common with misdemeanor charges, with no record that he was booked in the Cook County Jail.
Court records from that case state that Medina took $132 worth of merchandise from the Macy’s on North State Street without paying. Cook County Judge Peter Gonzalez later issued a warrant for his arrest when he missed a court date in August 2023.
That warrant was outstanding until Friday night, when CPD took him into custody. Court records show a revocation hearing for Medina’s pretrial release in the shoplifting case took place Monday morning.
Medina’s mother, reached by phone, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to DHS, Medina was apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection on May 9, 2023, and “released into the country” under the Biden administration. The timeline after that grows murkier.
The agency did not answer questions seeking further detail about Medina’s entry into the U.S., including where he was apprehended by Border Patrol or whether he came back on the radar of immigration officials after his arrest in Chicago. In response to questions from the Tribune about any detainer being issued during the process, DHS released a statement that said: “Jose Medina-Medina, a Venezuela criminal illegal alien, entered the U.S. illegally and was released into the country by the Biden’s catch release and polices. He had no pending asylum claims and should have never been allowed into our country.”
By June 2023, Medina was in Chicago, living at the Leone Beach Park fieldhouse in Rogers Park, a city-sponsored shelter for migrants, according to the address given on his arrest report.
The fieldhouse — about a half mile north from where Gorman was killed — was among the scores of city-owned buildings that temporarily served as shelters for the thousands of mostly Venezuelan migrants who arrived in the city in 2022 and 2023.
At the time of Medina’s arrest in 2023, members of the City Council were informed that more than 10,500 migrants had been bused to Chicago on the orders of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott as part of a broader attack on the city’s refusal to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
After the shooting of Gorman on Thursday, investigators were able to track Medina using neighborhood surveillance video, prosecutors said. His mother also identified him.
After the arrest, political reactions followed.
On X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, former state Sen. Darren Bailey of downstate Xenia, Pritzker’s Republican opponent in the governor’s race in November, said “JB Pritzker protects illegal criminals. One just killed an 18-year-old girl.”
Other Republicans on the federal and state legislative level similarly weighed in.
Illinois Senate Republican leader John Curran said Gorman’s killing “should be a call to action to all Illinois legislators, Illinois law enforcement and the governor’s administration to re-evaluate failed policies that prevent Illinois law enforcement officials from cooperating with federal authorities in relation to non-citizens who have broken the law in Illinois.”
It’s not the first time Republicans have tried to put Democrats in the hot seat over an issue that has caused intense divide in Illinois and across the country.
Operation Midway Blitz was inspired by the death of Katie Abraham, who was killed last year with another woman in a hit-and-run traffic crash caused by an alleged drunk driver in Urbana. The suspect in the case was a Guatemalan man who was in the U.S. without legal permission.
The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which helped organize much of the local pushback against Midway Blitz, said in a statement that Trump and other members of his administration were “trying to exploit a tragedy for political gain.”
“The murder of Sheridan Gorman is an unspeakable tragedy that no family should have to endure,” the statement read. “As he has throughout his time in office, (Trump) is trying to use this moment to divide our communities and scapegoat all immigrants at once.”
Pritzker’s office offered condolences to Gorman’s family, saying, “violent crime has no place in our streets, and we expect the alleged perpetrator to be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
Meanwhile, another Democrat, Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza, took a more hard-line stance on the suspect in the case, saying he deserves to be sent to a prison in El Salvador that the Trump administration has been known to use for noncitizens it deports.
“Excellent job by the investigators. My heart goes out to the heartbroken family of Sheridan Gorman. This sweet young Loyola freshman had a whole life ahead of her,” Mendoza posted on X. “Hold him. Prosecute him. Deport him to prison in El Salvador.”
On Monday, a memorial of bouquets had grown at the pier near where Gorman was killed.
Despite a red flag warning from the Chicago Park District, 35-year-old Ted Brady was surfing near the pier, and said he had retrieved some of the flowers that had blown into the water.
“It’s terribly sad,” Brady said. “I put myself in her situation, just walking around with my friends. As a member of the Rogers Park community, this is a spot of sanctuary.”
The Chicago Tribune’s Jason Meisner and Caroline Kubzansky contributed.
Source link
