A judge on Friday called the killing of Loyola University freshman Sheridan Gorman, who was shot while walking with friends along Chicago’s Lake Michigan shoreline, “random” and “egregious” as he ordered the suspect in the shooting detained.
With fellow students and friends who witnessed Gorman’s death sitting in the courtroom, and her family watching virtually, prosecutors detailed the heartbreaking series of events that led to the deadly shooting last week.
According to prosecutors, Gorman was with friends in her dorm at Loyola when the group decided to walk to the beach to get photos of Chicago’s skyline along Lake Michigan.
After they arrived, some of the group went to find a bathroom while the rest walked along the pier at Tobey Prinz Beach in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood.
Gorman was the first to reach a lighthouse at the seemingly empty pier, but when she arrived, she looked around the back and was startled to find someone there. She returned to her friends and whispered to them what she saw, prosecutors said.
That’s when they say the man jumped out from the lighthouse masked, displayed a gun and fired a shot at the group of students running away.
The bullet hit Gorman in the back and exited through her neck, prosecutors said.
Surveillance cameras from the area reportedly captured the sound of gunfire around 1:06 a.m. on March 19.
As the rest of the group fled the scene, prosecutors said some hid in a grassy area while others crouched behind a concrete wall and called 911.
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“As they all hid, [one victim] watched as the [defendant], wearing all black, slowly paced back and forth on the pier,” prosecutors said in court documents.
Police said they arrived to find Gorman’s body on the pier. She was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
Prosecutors noted surveillance video played a key role in the investigation that followed, with footage capturing a masked man with a limp walking to an apartment building.
“Surveillance videos also captured the [defendant’s] movements from the beach path back to his apartment building after the shooting. These videos capture him with a limp walking back from the beach path west on Pratt in the minutes after the shooting and then track him on Pratt, walking with a limp until he is observed heading into the alley off Sheridan, going in the direction of his apartment building at 1:13 a.m.,” the court docs stated. “In these videos, the [defendant] is still wearing the mask, and the surrounding streets are largely deserted at the time.”
Video at the building shows the man entering with a mask and gloves in his hand, and wearing the same clothing as the suspected shooter, prosecutors said.
A gun with “a high confidence correlation” to the one used in Gorman’s killing was found in an apartment in the building, wrapped in a ski mask, and the man’s mother identified him as the person seen in the surveillance footage, officials said. She told them the limp was due to a gunshot wound sustained years earlier.
One witness also identified images of the man as being consistent with the shooter, including the clothing and “distinct walk.”
Jose G. Medina, 25, was charged by Chicago police last Friday with first-degree murder, attempted first degree murder, three counts of aggravated assault/discharge of a firearm and one felony count of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon/no Firearm Owners Identification Card.
Before Chicago police announced charges had been filed, Immigration and Customs Enforcement asked local authorities not to release Medina and issued an arrest detainer, the Department of Homeland Security said Sunday. A statement from DHS said Medina was a Venezuelan migrant who they said entered the United States illegally.
He also had an active warrant for failure to appear for a misdemeanor retail theft charge.
Prosecutors argued Medina poses a threat to the community, saying he “has access to illegal firearms and that he uses them.”
In an unusual move, defense attorneys also argued in favor of detaining Medina, requesting he stay in Cook County, fearing he might instead be sent out of the country without due process by ICE.
Defense attorneys said Medina is developmentally delayed and “has the brain capacity of a child.” He was raised in an impoverished area of Venezuela before his family moved to Colombia, where he was shot in the head at a young age during a robbery and lost a portion of his brain and skull.
They argued that when he arrived at the U.S. border, he requested to be sent back to Colombia, but was instead sent to Chicago. His mother eventually migrated to Chicago and found him in a shelter before the pair moved to their current residence.
Medina has been hospitalized with tuberculosis and appeared in court virtually. He was ordered detained by Judge D’Anthony Thedford.
“It is difficult to imagine a greater threat than someone who hides themselves… with a mask on waiting for their prey,” Thedford said as he handed down his decision. “That provides the greatest threat… because of its randomness… there was no purpose.”
Medina is expected to appear in court again on April 15.
The Friday hearing came one day before family prepare to lay Gorman to rest.
Gorman will be laid to rest Saturday in Yorktown Heights, New York. A private memorial service is planned for family, and a public community vigil is also set for Saturday evening.
Gorman’s family has been outspoken since her death, calling for answers and accountability.
“What happened to Sheridan cannot be reduced to a ‘senseless tragedy,’ nor can it be explained in general terms about public safety. Sheridan was our daughter. She was 18 years old. She was doing something entirely normal—walking near her campus with friends. She should be here,” the family said in a statement earlier this week. “This was not random. It was not inevitable. And it cannot be treated as though it were. We appreciate the efforts of law enforcement in making an arrest. But safety is not defined by how quickly a case is solved after the fact. It is defined by whether a young woman like Sheridan is protected in the first place. Our daughter was not in the wrong place at the wrong time. The system failed her. Calling this ‘senseless’ is not enough. There must be a clear and honest accounting of what went wrong. We are not interested in rhetoric. We are asking for accountability. We will not allow Sheridan’s life to be reduced to a talking point or a generalization. We expect leadership that is willing to confront hard truths and ensure that what happened to her does not happen again.”
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