The grieving mother of slain Loyola student Sheridan Gorman slammed "galling" claims from a Chicago official that her daughter was in the "wrong place at the wrong time" when authorities say she was shot and killed by an illegal migrant as the family spoke out in an emotional interview Thursday on "The Story."
"Someone said, 'wrong place, wrong time,' the alderwoman, and actually, suggested that she might have startled this man, and that just, it flays me." Jess Gorman, Sheridan's mother, told anchor Martha MacCallum. "It just lays my heart wide open. My daughter was not in the wrong place at the wrong time-this man was."
Chicago Alderwoman Maria Hadden would apologize for those comments, saying "conservative media" misconstrued remarks she said were comparing Gorman's death to a separate case. But that brought little solace to the Gorman family.
The Gorman family is mourning the loss of their daughter and sister, saying policies could have prevented her death.
"She was supposed to be my maid of honor, one day, right beside me. I'm supposed to be the aunt of her children," said Madelon Gorman, Sheridan's sister. "It's something you never, ever expect to happen to you, to happen to your sibling, your best friend, your daughter."
Gorman, a freshman at Loyola University, was shot and killed in Chicago in March. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Jose Medina-Medina, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, was released from custody months earlier despite an active Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainer.
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Gorman's mother is now calling for answers, arguing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could have spared her daughter's life.
"ICE could have saved our daughter twice," Jess Gorman said. "To me, things like that show that they value these undocumented migrants more than they value our American citizens, our American children."
DHS released a statement confirming that Medina-Medina was released from custody twice. In 2023, Border Patrol apprehended the suspect before releasing him, according to DHS. Later that year, he was arrested and released again following a shoplifting arrest.
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The Gormans say Chicago's attitude toward immigration enforcement has been "infuriating."
"When they're naming trucks and laughing and joking several days after our daughter was murdered, we're waiting in Chicago to claim her body," Jess Gorman added, referencing a city snowplow Chicago named "Abolish ICE" just days after the shooting. "It was more than infuriating. I don't have, the vitriol that I felt was overwhelming."
The Gormans repeated that they don't consider themselves a partisan family, with Jess Gorman noting she's never "fought with people over politics."
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But Sheridan's father, Tom Gorman, said he's now left with the question of whether local policies led to his child's death. "I have to live every day with a choice in my head: Was my daughter an unintended consequence of good policy or the consequence of bad policy? And I know the answer for me," he said.
Medina-Medina pleaded not guilty during his arraignment last month. He has been charged with murder, attempted murder, aggravated assault, aggravated discharge of a firearm and illegal possession of a weapon.
Prosecutors said Gorman encountered Medina-Medina near a lighthouse. They said that after she alerted her friends, he chased the group and shot Gorman in the back. In March, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said there were "real failures" that contributed to Sheridan's death.
Pritzker said, "There have been real failures. Those failures, of course, extend beyond the borders of Illinois. That's their national failures, a failure to have comprehensive immigration reform, a failure of the president to follow his own edict to go after the worst of the worst."
