Man Charged in Murder of Sheridan Gorman Makes First Court Appearance

Jose Medina, the 26-year-old man charged with the March 19 murder of first-year student Sheridan Gorman, made his first appearance in court Friday at a detention hearing. He’s been formally ordered to be detained.

Circuit Court Judge D’Anthony Thedford ordered the man, an immigrant from Venezuela living in the United States illegally, be detained after Friday’s hearing. Medina’s public defender Julie Koehler said in an email to The Phoenix she made the “unusual request” to have her client remain in Cook County custody fearing his deportation by the Trump administration.

“ICE has placed a detainer hold on Jose and we fear that should he be released, ICE would arrest him [and] deport to a third country where he would not receive due process,” Koehler wrote in an email to The Phoenix.

Medina was unable to attend the previous March 22 hearing after being hospitalized with tuberculosis. He joined his March 27 detention hearing over Zoom from the Cook County Jail where he is being quarantined, according to Fox 32. He was seen throwing up at one point during the hearing, according to WGN.

Medina is scheduled to appear in court again April 15, ABC7 reported.

In detention hearings, defendants are read their official charges, and both the prosecution and defense make arguments as to why the defendant should remain in custody or be let out on bail in the time before and during their trial. Medina will next face an arraignment, where he will enter an official charge of guilty or not guilty. 

Koehler said Medina only attended school until he was seven and moved from Venezuela to Colombia as a teen following his mother who had moved after she was raped and her home burned down by a Venezuelan government official.

In 2018, Medina was robbed at gunpoint and shot in the head in Colombia, leaving him with a physical divot in his head and “severely brain damaged and disabled,” according to Koehler. She said he has the brain capacity of a child and is unable to read or write, and he still has several bullet fragments lodged in his brain.

In 2023, he first entered the United States “seeking safety” and turned himself in at the Texas border with Mexico, according to Koehler. After Medina requested to be deported back to Colombia, he was sent on a bus to Chicago. From 2022 to 2024, over 37,000 migrants were sent by bus to Chicago from Texas, a part of a political strategy Texas Gov. Greg Abbott where his administration would bus immigrants to cities with Democratic mayors, AP reported.

After arriving in Chicago in 2024, Koehler said Medina stayed at a homeless shelter where he contracted tuberculosis until his mother eventually immigrated legally and retrieved him from the shelter. The two have been living together at the apartment on the 6800 block of North Sheridan Road where Medina was arrested by the Chicago Police Department March 20.

In addition to the gunshot to the head, Medina was also shot in the knee and previously wore a knee brace, giving him the distinct limp which helped police identify and track him on surveillance footage, according to Block Club Chicago.

According to Assistant State’s Attorney Mike Pekara, Medina’s mother spoke with police, identified him in surveillance footage, said she remembered him leaving on the night of the shooting and confirmed he walks with a limp.

Medina was charged with a misdemeanor for shoplifting at the State Street Macy’s in 2023, The Phoenix reported. After being charged he was released pending trial for shoplifting $134 worth of items, according to WGN. There was an active warrant out for his arrest for skipping court as of September 2023, The Phoenix reported.

Officials at the hearing said there wasn’t any known connection between Gorman, her friends and Medina. Some of Gorman’s friends attended the hearing in person, and her family attended virtually.

Gorman and five other Loyola students made their way to Loyola Beach around 12 a.m. March 19. Medina was already behind the lighthouse at the end of the pier when the group arrived. Gorman was walking ahead of the group of three — two students had split off previously to use the bathroom — and was first to reach the lighthouse where she was startled by Medina before returning to her friends to alert them of his presence.

After Gorman returned to the remaining three, Medina appeared from behind the lighthouse holding a gun. While the four students ran away down the beach, Medina allegedly shot once, hitting Gorman in the back. While the shooting itself wasn’t caught on video, prosecutors in court Friday said audio from a private surveillance camera captured a single gunshot at 1:06 a.m., according to WTTW.

Gorman’s family have made additional statements criticizing local government officials — particularly Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Governor J.B. Pritzker for using Gorman’s death to make political arguments. They have continuously called for accountability in the death of their daughter.

“Our daughter is not a policy debate,” the statement reads. “She is a life that was taken, and that demands accountability. Calling this a tragedy is not enough. There must be a full and transparent accounting of what went wrong. We will not allow Sheridan’s name to be used in political arguments — but we will insist that her loss leads to real answers and real change.”

The family made another statement following the hearing reaffirming support for the Loyola community and again demanding accountability outside of the university.

“Loyola is a place where young people grow, build friendships, and pursue their futures — just as Sheridan was doing,” the statement reads. “Our daughter’s life should not be reduced to the circumstances of her death. She lived fully at Loyola, and we would want other students to have that same opportunity.”

A White House official told NBC 5 President Donald Trump had spoken with Gorman’s family, and in a March 25 press conference Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also used Gorman’s killing to criticize Democratic border policy and Chicago’s sanctuary city status.

“Again another innocent American citizen had her life stolen from her because Democrats embraced reckless open border policies and reckless sanctuary city policies which put criminals back into American communities,” Leavitt said. “How many more Americans have to die before the Democrats end this madness?”

Both a private funeral service and a public community vigil will be held Saturday afternoon in Gorman’s hometown of Yorktown, N.Y.

Editor’s note: The headline of this article was updated March 29.