Suspect in slaying of Loyola University student was in the country illegally, officials say

A Chicago man accused of gunning down a Loyola University student while she was out with friends near her school was in the country illegally, officials said Sunday.

Sheridan Gorman, 18, was killed shortly after 1 a.m. Thursday near Tobey Prinz Beach Park, less than a mile from campus, Chicago police said.

Jose Medina, 25, was arrested Friday night and booked on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and other gun-related charges in connection with the fatal shooting of Gorman, who was from the New York City suburb of Yorktown Heights.

Medina had been previously “apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol and released into the country,” according to a Department of Homeland Security statement.

The suspect was released again on June 19, 2023, following a shoplifting arrest in Chicago, federal officials said.

Gorman was “failed by open border policies and sanctuary politicians,” DHS spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement.

Medina, from Venezuela, came up to Gorman’s group “while wearing a mask and armed with a gun” and as “she attempted to flee, he fired his gun and shot her,” a DHS statement said.

“We are gravely disappointed by the policies and failures that allowed this individual to remain in a position to commit this crime,” a statement from Gorman’s family said.

“When systems fail — whether through release decisions, lack of coordination, or unwillingness to act — the consequences are not abstract. They are real. And in our case, they are permanent,” the family said.

It wasn’t immediately clear on Monday if Medina had hired or been appointed a lawyer to speak on his behalf.

Gorman’s slaying could take center stage in the nation’s ongoing debate on immigration in the same manner as Georgia nursing student Laken Riley’s murder in 2024.

The suspect in her slaying, Venezuelan citizen Jose Antonio Ibarra, illegally entered America in 2022 near El Paso, authorities have said.

The Trump administration frequently invokes Riley’s name in its justification of mass deportations and other anti-immigration actions.

Riley’s family has asked that their loved one’s name not be used in this public debate.

“I’d rather her not be such a political, how you say — it started a storm in our country,” father Jason Riley told NBC’s “TODAY” show a month after his daughter’s death, “and it’s incited a lot of people.”