Venezuelan national busted after allegedly killing 18-year-old Chicago student

A 25-year-old Venezuelan national, Jose Medina-Medina ,who entered the United States illegally has been arrested in connection with the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Loyola University Chicago student Sheridan Gorman. Gorman was reportedly walking with friends along the Tobey Prinz Beach pier, near campus, when a masked man opened fire, violently, and senselessly shooting her in the head. 

The young lady was pronounced dead at the scene.

In a statement to ABC7, Gorman’s family said that she had gone to the pier to look at the Northern Lights, emphasizing that “there was nothing reckless about her actions” at the time, suggesting further that this was a completely random attack.

“Sheridan was our daughter, our sister, and the heart of our family. She was full of life, full of kindness, and full of a love that she gave freely to everyone around her,” the family said in a statement.

Medina-Medina was arrested-arrested on Friday night and was scheduled to appear in court on Monday. This was delayed, however, as he has since been hospitalized for tuberculosis, according to prosecutors who spoke to the Chicago Tribune. At this point, no official motive has been identified for the crime.

In a statement released on Sunday, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has lodged a detainer against Medina. The department noted that Medina had been released twice in 2023 under the Biden administration's policies, including a release following an arrest for shoplifting in Chicago.

“Sheridan Gorman had her whole life ahead of her before this cold-blooded killer decided to end her life. She was failed by open border policies and sanctuary politicians who RELEASED this illegal alien TWICE before he went on to commit this heinous murder,” said Lauren Bis, DHS acting assistant secretary, in the statement.

“We are calling on Governor J.B. Pritzker and Chicago’s sanctuary politicians to commit to not releasing this criminal illegal alien from jail back into American neighborhoods,” she added.Responding to news of the arrest, the Gorman family issued a statement through ABC7, ultimately describing the tragedy as a “violent and preventable act.”

“We are gravely disappointed by the policies and failures that allowed this individual to remain in a position to commit this crime. When systems fail, whether through release decisions, lack of coordination, or unwillingness to act, the consequences are not abstract. They are real. And in our case, they are permanent.”

“This cannot be just another case that fades from public attention. Sheridan’s life mattered. What happened to her matters. And we will make sure she is not forgotten,” they continued.

Miss Gorman was an 18-year-old freshman at Loyola University Chicago, though originally from Yorktown, New York. A business major and active member of the Christian campus organization Cru, she was described by friends and family as a compassionate, joyful, and kind person who was deeply involved in her campus community despite only being in her first year. 

The fatal incident occurred around 1:15 a.m. at the Tobey Prinz Beach pier in Rogers Park while Gorman was walking with a group of friends, having gone to the lakefront specifically to try to view the Northern Lights. According to investigators, the masked man approached the group from behind a lighthouse and opened fire as they attempted to flee. Gorman was struck in the head and pronounced dead at the scene. No other injuries were reported among her friends.

A memorial and scholarship fund are being established in Gorman’s honor in her hometown of Yorktown.

This is the sort of story that should shame a nation. A young woman, full of promise and untouched by any recklessness or provocation, steps out on a clear night simply to witness a rare natural wonder, the Northern Lights dancing above Lake Michigan. In that innocent moment she is executed at point-blank range by a man who had no right to be in the country at all, a man released not once but twice by the very authorities charged with protecting American citizens.

The family’s grief is raw and dignified. They insist there was “nothing reckless about her actions,” as if even the faintest suggestion of fault must be extinguished before it can be whispered. They are right to do so. For this was not a tragic encounter between rival gang members or the unhappy result of some personal dispute. It was, by every available account, a random slaughter, the sort that occurs when the state has decided that its own laws on entry and removal are optional, when sanctuary policies matter more than the safety of its own people, and when the consequences of those decisions are borne not by politicians in their guarded offices but by freshmen walking along a pier.

Consider the sequence. The killer, a Venezuelan an illegal alien, had already been arrested for shoplifting in Chicago. Under the policies of the Biden administration he was released. Later he was encountered again and released once more. 

Now an American teenager lies dead, her skull shattered by his bullet, while he sits in hospital with tuberculosis, the court appearance postponed. The Department of Homeland Security has at last lodged a detainer, as though such paperwork could resurrect the dead or undo the years of deliberate negligence that placed the murderer on that pier in the first place.

The family sees it clearly. “We are gravely disappointed by the policies and failures that allowed this individual to remain in a position to commit this crime,” they say. “When systems fail, whether through release decisions, lack of coordination, or unwillingness to act, the consequences are not abstract. They are real. And in our case, they are permanent.”

There is a terrible eloquence in those words. Permanent. That is what open-border ideology and sanctuary-city dogma have delivered to Sheridan Gorman and her family: a permanent absence, a life cut short at eighteen, a future of studies and friendships and quiet Christian witness erased in a single act of casual savagery.

Politicians will speak of  “comprehensive reform” and “root causes” in the days ahead, as they always do. They will treat this as one more data point in an argument rather than as the human catastrophe it is. But the family will not let it fade. “This cannot be just another case that fades from public attention,” they declare. “Sheridan’s life mattered. What happened to her matters. And we will make sure she is not forgotten.”

They should not have to fight alone for that remembrance. The rest of us, those still fortunate enough to live under laws that are actually enforced, have a duty to ensure that Sheridan Gorman is not remembered merely as another statistic in the long ledger of migrant crime, but as the precise and foreseeable cost of a governing philosophy that values ideological purity over the elementary obligation to keep citizens safe in their own streets and on their own shores. 

A scholarship and a memorial in Yorktown will be established, small consolations for an irreparable loss. Yet the true memorial must be larger: a national reckoning with the reality that when a country stops controlling its borders, it stops controlling its fate, and the first to pay are the young, the innocent, and the hopeful, walking out one autumn night to see the lights in the sky.

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Lightfoot's anti-gun hotline was a not-line and a failure

Chicago's Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot created an anti-gun tip hotline in July 2021. The purpose of the hotline was for people to turn in their neighbors, family and all others who are known to possess a firearm and they would get money for squealing. 

Lightfoot funded this hotline with one million taxpayer dollars in order for people “who have a conscience” to take a bite out of crime and get paid for turning people into law enforcement.

After just one year since the Orwellian program began, only a pittance of people provided tips that had been verified and thus rewarded with money. At this time, a tad over 0.01%, or $10,395 of the $1,000,000 was paid out to informants, according to the Chicago Tribune.

“I want you to know that I recognize that people are scared, people all over the city. This is the topic of conversation,” Lightfoot said. “Gun violence is holding us back from realizing our individual potential and our potential and greatness as a city.”

Her solution was to get rid of violent guns, because they don't have a conscience and will shoot anyone who gets in their way. Yes, this is leftist logic, if you believe they mean it.

Lightfoot’s handpicked police superintendent, David Brown, added, “This incentive will not only bring honest people forward because of that anonymity but likely will bring people who may be involved, who have a conscience,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported. 

Turns out Brown and Lightfoot don't know much about the human condition because the first tip to Lightfoot's "Gun Trafficking and Homicide Tip Line" took ten months to happen. In May 2022, the very first tip that resulted in an arrest and charge found the tipster being paid $10,000, according to WFLD.

According to the city’s infographic for the hotline, tipsters will be paid $3,000 if their tip leads to charges of someone buying or illegally selling ten or more guns, they will receive $5,000 if someone is convicted of the crime, they can get $10,000 for tips leading to a homicide charge, and they will be rewarded $15,000 if those charged with homicide are convicted.

It's like a game show that nobody's watching.

Despite the general failure of the tip line, Lightfoot has tried to make sell it to the public.

Arne Duncan, former Obama Education Secretary and possible candidate for the mayor’s office, blasted Lightfoot for her thoughtless attempts to fight crime.

“Strategies that aren’t thought out, that aren’t thoughtful, that aren’t implemented, that’s almost like the worst possible scenario. This stuff is really hard, it’s complex, but headlines and P.R. don’t keep people alive,” Duncan said, according to the Chicago Tribune. “The fact that this is literally a matter of life and death and the fact we are losing so many lives is untenable. This is the crisis facing our city.”

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And all the violent guns just laughed as crimes committed by them and the innocent people pointing them, have been increasing year by year.

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Kim Foxx is okay with outside investigation into Smollett case

Cook County State's Attorney [while she still has her law license] Kim Foxx [no relation to Redd Foxx but she is friends with the Obamas] said that she is open to an independent outside investigation into her office's horrible decision to dismiss all charges against "alleged" racial hoaxer and staunch anti-Trumper, Jussie Smollett. [The word 'alleged' is used to protect us from lawsuits but the evidence that shows Smollett is guilty is highly overwhelming.]

In an op-ed for The Chicago Tribune, Foxx admitted that a third-party review into the high-profile case would help maintain transparency, something she pretends to welcome with open adipose arms.

The surprise decision to drop all 16 charges on Tuesday, followed by Smollett's refusals to apologize along with claims of his innocence and complete exoneration, was followed by an immediate rebuke from Chicago's mayor Rahm Emanuel and police superintendent Eddie T. Johnson. Both men said that it was a "whitewash of justice" which subsequently put pressure on the state's attorney's office to defend its whitewash actions.

“I am not perfect, nor is any other prosecutor out there, but ensuring that I and my office have our community’s trust is paramount,” Foxx, who ran on a platform of transparency, wrote.

Foxx also initially said she recused herself from the Smollett case and later stated that she didn't mean "recuse-recuse," she was merely being colloquial and only meant 'recuse'. The question is, how can anyone use the legal term 'recuse' in a colloquial way?

Smollett is accused of staging an anti-gay, racist attack on himself in January in order to promote his career. He has denied the charges from the start and says two men approached him at 2 a.m. during a polar vortex, beat him, threw bleach they apparently had on him and tied a rope around his neck before shouting, "This is MAGA country," in reference to President Trump's campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again."

Yes. We are to believe that while most people were at home in their warm beds, two white Trump supporters IN CHICAGO knew who Smollett is because they watch "Empire" like all good Trump supporters, had bleach and a rope with them, and attacked him.

We are also to believe that in during the entire "attack," Smollett held onto his Subway sandwich, left the rope around his neck and waited 40 minutes to call the cops. And we are expected to believe that after he told the cops that he spoke with his boss when the attack occurred, but refused to give up his phone to them so they could check, that he was telling the truth.

And we are expected to believe that the two Nigerian men who he knew, who bought red hats [not MAGA hats--they're impossible to buy in Chicago], rope and bleach, prior to the attack, and that Smollett had written them a check for three thousand dollars, [not a Mensa move], and who subsequently told law enforcement that Smollett hired him to attack him, that he is innocent?

In order to investigate the alleged hate crime, the city removed 24 detectives from their regular cases, expending up to 1,000 hours to hunt down the truth.

“In determining whether or not to pursue charges, prosecutors are required to balance the severity of the crime against the likelihood of securing a conviction,” Foxx wrote. “For a variety of reasons ... my office believed the likelihood of securing a conviction was not certain.”

Yeah, and OJ is still looking for the killer of his wife.

According to sources, including my own source, Vinny Bagadonuts, the grand jury was willing to indict Smollett with a sliver of evidence the Chicago PD provided to them.

Foxx said Smollett’s “alleged unstable actions have probably caused him more harm than any court-ordered penance could.”  Boo hoo. But she added that jails should be reserved for those who commit violent crimes, which is not her call to make, and it's blatantly false.

Her defense isn't swaying many people.

"Foxx could have distanced herself from this blunder given that her own blunder — emailing and texting with people close to Smollett early in the investigation — had prompted her to step away from the case and leave it to underlings," Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn wrote. "But she grabbed ownership of it Wednesday, giving interviews in which she expressed pride and confidence in the way her office had handled the case."

Zorn, like so many others in Chicago, believe Foxx "probably will and arguably should lose her job next year over her office's handling of the Jussie Smollett case." Some believe she should lose her license to practice law.

Foxx's actions also prompted both the National District Attorneys Association and the Illinois Prosecutors bar Association to sharply criticize her office.

President Trump obviously waded into the controversy because he cannot help himself, saying he would asked federal law enforcement officials to look into Smollett's case right after he asks them to check out whether Adam Schiff was the guy caught on camera jay walking on J Street.

“I think the case in Chicago is an absolute embarrassment to our country, and I have asked that they look at it,” Trump said.


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Munchkin misbehavior or fake news?

In an ABC news report, freelance writer Gary Nunn tracked down Jerry Maren, a 98-year-old former actor who played a munchkin in the "Wizard of Oz" and asked if he molested Judy Garland.

The claim of molestation came from Sid Luft, the late Garland's late husband in a re-released book due to come out in September: "Judy and I: My Life with Judy Garland."

Luft wrote: 

"The'd make Judy's life miserable on set by putting their hands under her dress . . . The men were 40 or more years old. They thought they could get away with anything because they were so small."

Maren is the last remaining munchkin above ground and lives in somewhere in the U.S. but his location was not revealed in the article. He is the last living person who can respond to the allegation and has the right to be heard, but apparently nobody but Nunn has tried to contact him.

The #MeToo movement must agree that anyone accused of such a vile act deserves to respond when being accused of sexual misconduct.

Garland was 16 when the film was made in 1939.

Nunn write: 

"But the public also has a right to know if Maren wants to respond to these new allegations. If he wants to refute them, he ought to be given the chance. Otherwise, when future generations Google them, this story will forever tarnish their name."

It was Maren--a "Lollipop Guild" munchkin--who handed a lollipop to Dorothy. He was the little guy who is personally implicated in the molestation. Even if he wasn't guilty of the allegation, his name is already dirtied with the reporting, some of which was so inaccurate, that some media falsely reported that he died in 2013, giving credence to Trump's accusation about the existence of fake news.

Garland had previously claimed the munchkins were "drunks" who liked to party all night. She claimed the police rounded them up in butterfly nets.

In response to the "drunken" allegations, Maren said Toto (the dog) was paid more than the munchkins and that they couldn't get drunk on the meager salary of $50 a week.

Nunn spoke to several little people familiar with the story. Mark Povinelli, president of the Little People of America said, "I contacted a friend close to Jerry Maren. Unfortunately, due to Jerry's health, he hasn't been in a condition to give an interview for a while now." He added that Maren did not want to give any more attention to the allegations.

A longtime friend of Maren, Philip M. Potempa, a diarist for The Chicago Tribune Media Co. apparently refutes the new allegations. He told Nunn, "I spoke with a buddy of mine who has written a few books on the munchkins. From what he advised me, there's no merit to any of these allegations and it's an attempt at further promotion for the book."

Money can make people do disgusting things. Nunn believes that there is the possibility that Maren was "thrown under the bus" by "a dead man talking about his ex-wife."


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More people shot and killed at memorial where man was shot and killed

(Photo: Chicago Tribune)

Question: What's the difference between ISIS and Chicago?
Answer: In Chicago, they don't yell "Allahu Akbar!" when they shoot you.

Two more people were killed and eight were wounded in an attack at the site of a memorial for a guy who was killed earlier Sunday in the Brighton Park neighborhood, according to police.

Chicago police First Deputy Superintendent Kevin Navarro described the attack to the media as "another brazen act of gang violence."

The victims were taking part in a memorial for Danial Cardova who had been killed at the 2600 block of West 46th Place earlier in the same day when two attackers fired rifles from a nearby alleyway.

Deputy Chief Kevin Ryan said police were hitting the area hard in their investigation. "We have a fairly good idea who we're looking for," he said. "We have a fairly good idea of the conflict involved and right now we're trying to saturate the area."

The Alderman of the 15th district, Raymond Lopez, surveyed the shooting scene and expressed his frustration with the third rifle shooting in a week. He mostly blamed the "assault rifles" for the problem and called on neighbors to be vigilant in reporting criminal activity.

"The wakeup call has been here. It's time to act. It's time for each and every one of us to start looking at what's going on on our block, identifying who is a gang member, who's selling drugs and who is supporting them in our communities," Lopez said is a string of cliches that would obviously make a hockey player smile when being interviewed between periods.

(Photo: Chicago Tribune)

If Chicago just got their wakeup call, they must have wakened from the dead. More people are shot in the Windy City than in Afghanistan. 

In this latest shooting, a man of about 25 died on the scene, and a 29-year-old woman died of her wounds in hospital, officials said. Eight additional gunshot victims were being treated at various Chicago hospitals.

There were plenty more shootings in Chicago on Sunday alone. If you want to read more about this war zone, go to the Chicago Tribune.

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Obama administration compares him to the pope

President Obama was called "The First Gay President," and "The First Black President" and now "The Pope-like President." Of course, it isn't the public saying that, although I suspect there are some progressive liberals who think he can walk on water and part the seas (himself among the crowd), but it is his administration making this absurd claim.

The Washington Examiner discussed how both Pope Francis and President Barack Hussein Obama have "both dedicated their lives to helping the less fortunate . . . " and both have "talked, quite publicly, about their commitment to social justice.," said White House mouthpiece, Josh "Notso" Earnest, who added, "And both men have dedicated not just their careers, but their lives, to that effort."

In his emetic, sycophantic way, Earnest spoke about how the so-called president refused high-paying jobs when he graduated from law school in order to spread his ideology into Chicago's poor South side, and how the Pope is known for advocating for poor communities in Argentina as he ascended in the Church ranks.

And you can see all the good Obama has done for the South side of Chicago as the latest developments show in the Chicago Tribune. 

Socialism is an interesting intellectual exercise but it has done nothing good for the poor--EVER.

Earnest went on to say: "And you know, the president actually worked quite closely with other Catholics in that community, and the president has talked about that quite a bit . . . this has been a value that has animated the president's career choices since he was a young man."

Comparing Obama to the pope is not very different from his 2008 speech where he claimed that by electing him that "this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal . . . " and the moment the U.S. would restore its image as the last bastion of hope.

He probably called that lie "Hope a dope."

Obama believes he is better than the pope because he has more power than the pontiff. Obama, by his inaction, has been able to take an entire nation, the one-time world's most respected nation, and run it into the ground. Name one country that honestly respects us and prove this statement wrong.

Obama believes he is better than the pope because he isn't encumbered by religion. He is neither a Christian nor a Muslim, but is a progressive who will be whatever religion suits his ideology.

Obama believes he is better than the pope because arrogance and narcissism are blind to reality.


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