The parents of the Loyola University Chicago freshman who was fatally shot near campus said their daughter likely saved her friends’ lives by warning them to run moments before she was killed.

18-year-old Sheridan Gorman was shot and killed while walking with her friends along a pier near Lake Michigan at approximately 1:30 am on March 19. The Gormans’ parents, Thomas and Jessica, revealed details about the night their daughter was killed in an interview with CBS News.

“He, like, moved towards her threateningly,” her mother explained. “She turned around and she warned her friends that there was a man with a gun and you need to run. And they ran.”

Thomas added that his daughter ran about 40 feet before being shot in the back and the neck.

The parents were told by police that their daughter’s warnings to her friends likely saved their lives. “Presumably, that’s what we heard,” Jessica said.

“They say it was a senseless tragedy. It wasn’t. It was a murder. It was a preventable murder,” she added.

Authorities charged Jose Medina-Medina, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, with murder. Medina was previously apprehended by Border Patrol after entering the US in May 2023 and later released under the Biden administration. He was arrested one month after his release for shoplifting in Chicago.
Medina’s public defender, Julie Koehler, told CBS News that he was shot in the head during a robbery in Colombia in 2018, leaving him with the “mental capacity of a child.”

Gorman’s parents, however, dismissed this claim, saying, “He had the mental capacity and the wherewithal to buy a gun, to have a mask on, and to be waiting.”

“The mask was on, and he had a gun pointed at my daughter when she passed him,” her mother added.