As the suspect in the killing of Loyola University student Sheridan Gorman faces charges, scrutiny is growing over the policies her family said left the accused in a position to commit the crime.
Jose Medina-Medina, the 25-year-old Venezuelan national charged with Gorman's murder, entered the U.S. illegally under the Biden administration before being apprehended and released into the country, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Sunday.
DHS also confirmed that Medina had been previously arrested for shoplifting in Chicago.
Veteran Chicago reporter William J. Kelly called the killing "the single most avoidable loss of life" in Chicago's history Monday on "Fox & Friends" and claimed Medina had been arrested multiple times for "deportable offenses." He slammed Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson's catch-and-release approach to migrant crime while praising the work of the Chicago Police Department (CPD).
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"This suspect never should have been in the country to begin with... And God bless the CPD, the Chicago police, because they have been arresting this guy, despite the fact that Mayor Johnson is endlessly telling them not to touch the illegals, not to detain them, not to turn them over to ICE," he said.
Kelly argued the mayor has no good answer for his decisions that led to what he called a "revolving door." And although Medina is now behind bars, his apprehension brought Kelly no great comfort.
"Guess what? There are thousands of Jose Medinas that are in a revolving door that's going by, going around so fast... that I'm surprised that they're not flying out of the jail, because this is exactly the policies that got Sheridan Gorman killed," he said.
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Gorman's family released a statement in which they excoriated "the policies and failures that allowed this individual to remain in a position to commit this crime" after multiple arrests.
"Sheridan was 18. She had her entire life ahead of her... All of that was taken in a moment, and there is no way to repair the loss," the statement read in part.
Simply walking near her campus was an ordinary act, they wrote, refusing to allow her murder "to be dismissed as 'wrong place, wrong time.' This was not random misfortune. This was a violent and preventable act."
Gorman's family demanded complete accountability, rejecting the idea of "second chances that put others at risk."
"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."
Fox News Digital Matt Finn, Emma Bussey and Bill Melugin contributed to this report.
