An illegal immigrant from Venezuela was charged with murdering an 18-year-old Loyola University freshman as she walked along Chicago's lakefront.
Jose Medina, 25, faces first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, three counts of aggravated assault/discharge of a firearm, and aggravated unlawful possession of a weapon after fatally shooting 18-year-old Sheridan Gorman.
According to the New York Post, Gorman, a business student from Yorktown, New York, was strolling along the pier at Chicago's Tobey Prinz Beach with friends around 1:30 a.m. Thursday, when Medina allegedly approached the group wearing a mask. He allegedly shot Gorman in the head as she attempted to flee, then hid in a nearby apartment building.
She was 18 years old. She had just started college.
The timeline here is damning in its simplicity. Medina was originally detained at the border in May 2023 but was released into the United States, according to a DHS release obtained by Fox News. That same year, he was arrested and released for shoplifting from a Macy's in Chicago.
Detained once. Arrested twice. Released both times. Now charged with murder.
This is not a story about a system that cracked under pressure. It is a story about a system that functioned exactly as designed under the Biden administration's border policies: catch, process, release, and hope for the best. The "best" arrived Thursday morning on a Chicago pier.
DHS Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis did not mince words:
"Gorman was failed by open border policies and sanctuary politicians who released this illegal alien twice before he went on to commit this heinous murder."
Bis also issued a direct challenge to Illinois leadership:
"We are calling on Governor Pritzker and Chicago's sanctuary politicians to commit to not releasing this criminal illegal alien from jail back into American neighborhoods."
Governor Pritzker has not, as of the available reporting, responded.
Chicago's sanctuary city laws shielded Medina from the kind of cooperation between local and federal authorities that could have put him in deportation proceedings long before Thursday. The city chose, as a matter of policy, to limit its own ability to hand illegal immigrants over to federal immigration authorities. That policy choice has a body count now.
This is the fundamental dishonesty of the sanctuary framework. Its architects sell it as compassion, as community trust, as a way to make immigrant neighborhoods safer. But the actual mechanical output of the policy is straightforward: people who should not be in the country remain in the country, and people who have already demonstrated criminal behavior get recycled back onto the streets.
Medina was not hiding in the shadows. He was arrested for shoplifting at a department store. That was a moment. An opportunity. A checkpoint where the system could have flagged an illegal immigrant with a prior border detention and initiated removal. Instead, he walked.
Illinois abolished the death penalty in 2011. The harshest punishment Medina can face is life in prison with no parole. Sheridan Gorman's family will live with the consequences of Chicago's policy choices for the rest of their lives. Medina will live, period.
Friends who were with Gorman that night told the Chicago Sun-Times that the attack "didn't seem like it was intentionally targeted." One friend described the randomness of it:
"It seemed like he was there for a reason, and we were just in the wrong place, wrong time. I'm guessing, because there was not another shot after that. It was just one."
Just one. That is all it took.
The gunman's motive remains unclear, which somehow makes the whole thing worse. Not a robbery gone wrong. Not a personal dispute. An 18-year-old girl walking along the lake at night in a major American city, and a masked man with a gun who should have been in Venezuela.
Gorman's family described her in an online obituary with the kind of warmth that makes the loss tangible:
"Sheridan was everyone's cheerleader in every sense of the word. She had a way of making people feel seen, valued, and believed in."
"She radiated something even greater—a rare and unmistakable warmth, a spirit that was vibrant, compassionate, and full of life. She was funny, kind, and deeply loving, with a heart that made space for everyone."
A private service for Gorman is set to be held on Saturday in Yorktown.
Every time a story like this surfaces, the same defensive machinery activates. We are told not to generalize. We are told that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates. We are told that focusing on immigration status is a distraction from the "real" issue of gun violence.
None of those answers the only question that matters: Would Sheridan Gorman be alive if the border had been enforced and sanctuary laws had not existed?
The answer is almost certainly yes. Medina would not have been in Chicago. He would not have been on that pier. He would not have had the opportunity to fire the single shot that killed a college freshman four months into her adult life.
Every preventable murder committed by someone who should have been deported is a policy failure with a name attached. This one's name is Sheridan Gorman. She was 18, she was kind, and she made space for everyone. Chicago's leaders made space for her killer.
