Sheridan Gorman’s Parents Speak Out About Their Daughter’s Death

The parents of first-year student Sheridan Gorman, who was fatally shot March 19 near the Lake Shore Campus, spoke publicly for the first time about their daughter’s death in a segment for CBS News, which aired April 22. 

Sheridan Gorman’s parents, Jessica Gorman and Thomas Gorman, said their daughter’s death was a “preventable murder” and criticized politicians who said otherwise. Mayor Brandon Johnson had called the death senseless violence.

“They say it was a senseless tragedy,” Jessica Gorman said. “It wasn’t. It was a murder.”

Sheridan Gorman died March 19 after she was shot while walking with a group of her friends at the Loyola Beach pier, where they encountered a masked gunman.

Jessica Gorman said she’d learned Sheridan Gorman saw the gunman and warned her friends to run away. Thomas Gorman told CBS News his daughter made it less than 50 feet before she was shot and died at the scene. 

Chicago police said the shooting appeared random, The Phoenix reported. 

“She was really an amazing person,” Jessica Gorman said. “I actually, I grieve not only for all of the people she touched in this life, but the people she won’t touch.”

Jessica Gorman discussed how it felt for the police to arrive at their door at 6 a.m. in Yorktown, New York to let them know Sheridan Gorman had been killed. She said she fell to her knees when she heard “the news no parent should ever hear.”

“There’s nothing that prepares you for going to the medical examiner’s office and filling out the paperwork,” Thomas Gorman said. “Your hand is trembling, and then you have to go identify your daughter’s body.”

Thomas Gorman recalled the workers at the medical examiner’s office asking him if he was ready to see Sheridan Gormans’s body. 

“Nothing makes you ready for that,” he said.

Chicago police arrested and charged Jose Medina, 26, with first-degree murder and illegal possession of a firearm in connection with Sheridan Gorman’s death, The Phoenix reported. 

According to the Department of Homeland Security, Medina is a Venezuelan immigrant who entered the United States illegally in 2023, The Phoenix reported. 

Medina’s public defender, Julie Koehler, said Medina was robbed and shot in the head in 2018 in Colombia, The Phoenix reported. The incident left Medina with a physical divot in his head and “severely brain damaged and disabled,” according to Koehler. 

Koehler said Medina still has several bullet fragments lodged in his brain, and he has the brain capacity of a child. 

Jessica and Thomas Gorman told CBS they didn’t agree with Koehler’s assessment that Medina had the capacity of a child. 

“He had the mental capacity and the wherewithal to buy a gun, to have a mask on and to be waiting,” Jessica Gorman said. “The mask was on, and he had a gun pointed at my daughter when she passed him.” 

Thomas Gorman added “a child does not do that.”

Medina has a criminal record from a shoplifting incident in June 2023 when he was arrested and released, The Phoenix reported. He was also apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol in May 2023, but was then released.

Jessica Gorman told CBS she’s still trying to understand what policies led to her daughter’s death.

“Clearly there needs to be some cooperation between state and local government and federal officials,” Thomas Gorman said. “When someone commits a crime, and they’ve been here illegally, there needs to be cooperation. He was arrested for, yes, a nonviolent crime, but he also was here illegally. In our mind, he should’ve been handed over to the feds at that point.”

The Trump administration has used Sheridan Gorman’s death to push for harder immigration enforcement, saying the death was the “direct result of failed border & sanctuary city policies” in an Instagram post March 24.

Though they don’t want their daughter’s death to be about politics, Sheridan Gormans’s parents told CBS they wanted accountability for what happened. 

“They’ve awakened a bear,” Jessica Gorman said. “They’ve awakened a big grizzly mama bear. I’ve got to fight for my child. I have to fight for yours. I have to turn this devastating darkness into light somehow.”

Medina hasn’t yet entered a plea but will next appear in court April 29 for his arraignment, where a judge will be assigned to his case, the charges against him will be read and he will enter a plea, The Phoenix reported.