Killing of Sheridan Gorman: Venezuelan migrant arrested for execution-style murder of New York teen in Chicago

A 25-year-old Venezuelan man has been arrested in connection with the execution-style murder of Sheridan Gorman, a New York teen, who was on a night stroll with her friends near Loyola University Chicago’s campus.

The name of the man who has not been officially charged has not been disclosed. The suspect was wearing black clothes and a black mask when he shot Gorman dead on Thursday. The gunman was identified because of his distinct limp as seen in the surveillance footage. It was not immediately known whether the Venezuelan man was in the US legally or how long he had been in the country. The Chicago Tribune reported that the suspect had one prior arrest in Cook County, a shoplifting misdemeanor from a Macy’s in June 2023.

A police report obtained by the Tribune offered scant details about the shooting, only stating that Rogers Park (24th) District police found Gorman on the pier at Loyola Beach in Rogers Park with a gunshot wound to the back. Officers recovered a single shell casing about 40 feet from Gorman’s body, the report stated. Police said in a statement she’d been walking with friends when a gunman walked up to them, pulled out a weapon and fired at them.

Sheridan was pronounced dead with a gunshot wound to the back. She was with her friends in the early hours of Thursday looking for the Northern lights. “She was exactly where she should have been — close to campus, surrounded by friends, living her life,” her family said in their statement. “What happened to Sheridan cannot be reduced to the idea of someone being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” the statement said.

“This is not an abstraction. This is the loss of a daughter. The loss of a sister. The loss of a future filled with milestones that will now never come. Our family is forever changed.”