A Venezuelan migrant has been arrested in connection with the execution-style murder of an 18-year-old Loyola University Chicago freshman, authorities confirmed Saturday, as her family released a tribute calling her “everyone’s cheerleader.”
Sheridan Gorman, of Yorktown Heights, New York, was shot in the back at the Loyola Beach Pier at approximately 1:30 a.m. on Thursday, March 19. She had gone out with friends that night to look for the Northern Lights. She never made it home.
The suspect, a 25-year-old Venezuelan national whose identity has not been officially released, allegedly approached Gorman from behind and fired a single shot before she could run. He was wearing black clothes and a black mask at the time of the killing, according to an arrest report obtained by the Chicago Tribune.
Surveillance footage from West Pratt Boulevard captured the suspect walking north of campus before entering a nearby apartment building minutes after the shooting. Internal cameras inside the building recorded him without his mask. Investigators identified him through a “distinct limp” visible in the footage.
The suspect had one prior arrest in Cook County: a shoplifting misdemeanor at a Macy’s in June 2023. His legal immigration status and length of time in the country were not immediately confirmed by authorities, Fox News reported.
Gorman was a business student in her first year at Loyola. She was active in Loyola’s “Cru” Christian group and had recently returned from a trip to Indianapolis with fellow members. Her social media showed a young woman settling into college life, with a post from March 8 looking forward to “warmer days ahead.”
Her family said she was close to campus, with friends, doing exactly what she should have been doing.
“What happened to Sheridan cannot be reduced to the idea of someone being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” her family said in a statement Saturday. “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.”
In a separate tribute, her family described her as someone with a rare gift for connection.
“She had a way of making people feel seen, valued, and believed in,” the family wrote in her obituary. “She radiated something even greater: a rare and unmistakable warmth, a spirit that was vibrant, compassionate, and full of life. A heart that made space for everyone.”
A private service will be held next Saturday in Yorktown. A community vigil is also being planned.
Gorman’s killing comes as Chicago continues to see violent crime plague neighborhoods near the city’s universities. The case has drawn national attention for the suspect’s immigration status, amid the ongoing national debate over immigration enforcement and the consequences of untracked migrants in American cities.
No formal charges had been confirmed as of Saturday afternoon.
