Jose Medina, 25, an illegal alien from Venezuela, has been charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder, and aggravated discharge of a firearm for the March 19 attack near a pier at Tobey Prinz Beach in which Loyola University-Chicago student Sheridan Gorman, 18, was murdered.
Gorman and her friends had taken an early morning stroll just north of the Rogers Park campus to capture photos with a view of the skyline and potentially the Northern Lights, her family said in a statement.
When they arrived, a masked gunman "emerged from the shadows" and fired a single shot as they fled, killing Gorman.
In a statement, her family said they were "gravely disappointed by the policies and failures that allowed this individual to remain in a position to commit this crime."
President Donald Trump's administration has branded her killing as the result of sanctuary policies in Illinois.
Patricia "P Rae" Easley, an ambassador for the Project 21 Black Leadership Network who recently ran in the Republican primary for Illinois' 7th Congressional District, is appalled at the silence of Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) and Governor J.B. Pritzker (D).
"They haven't said anything about what happened to Sheridan," she reports. "For me as a Chicagoan, this is extremely disturbing and sad because she was doing what all 18-year-olds do in the city of Chicago, and that's hang out at the lakefront. The mayor has not stated that he's going to put more police cars down there; the governor hasn't stated that he's going to go back and look at the sanctuary laws."
For them, Easley says Gorman's death is "just collateral damage."
"It's not right," she argues.
"The illegals, specifically the Venezuelans, have been terrorizing the American people along Chicago's lakefront for the past two years," she says. "We have documented evidence of it."
Medina was among thousands of migrants who arrived in Chicago, many of them bused to the city by GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in protest of former President Joe Biden's border policies. The Department of Homeland Security said he was taken into custody by the U.S. Border Patrol in May 2023, released and then taken into custody again two months later for shoplifting.
He was charged with misdemeanor retail theft in that case, accused of stealing $132.50 of merchandise from the State Street Macy’s, county court records show. An outstanding warrant from that case is active.
Easley is calling on Trump to send in federal help to deal with the Venezuelan migrant problem.
