They came to laugh, cry, stand together, and remember. Members of the Yorktown community—an estimated thousand strong—braved the cold on the evening of March 28 to celebrate the life of Sheridan Gorman, the 18-year-old murdered near her college campus at Loyola University Chicago. They came to remember a girl who "made everyone feel seen," who was a friend to so many, and, most of all, was a cherished daughter and sister.
"If there's anything we can all do in her honor, it's this," her mother Jessica Gorman said. "Love people like Sheridan—loudly, freely, without holding back,"
After a private funeral and burial, the family gathered with neighbors, classmates, teammates and well-wishers in Yorktown to remember and celebrate their daughter’s life.
Field hockey coach Courtney Hyndman said that to know Sheridan “was to love her, the warmth that exuded from her, the laughter that would erupt when around her and the comfort she could bring a friend whenever it was needed.”
In the family’s first public appearance since the shooting, the Gormans took the stage to deliver an emotional tribute to their daughter that was full of warmth and even humor as well as sadness.
Madelon, Sheridan’s sister, said, “I should be planning her wedding, her college graduation, her bachelorette party, arguing with her about dresses. Not standing here trying to figure out how to say goodbye to my baby sister.”
The family vowed to seek justice for their daughter and sister.
"Sheridan, she was our joy. Our collective joy, and now that joy is gone," her father, Thomas Gorman, said, looking out at the crowd dressed in Yorktown green and white. “That joy didn't just last in our home, it lives here."
Only months from finishing her freshman year, Sheridan Gorman’s life was heartbreakingly cut short. She was shot and killed on March 19 while walking with friends in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood, less than a mile from her college campus.
According to witnesses, a man dressed in black and wearing a black mask — later identified as Jose Medina, a 25-year-old Venezuelan said to be in the United States illegally — pointed a gun at Gorman and fired a single shot as she tried to run away.
Medina has been charged with her murder and is scheduled to return to court in Chicago on April 15.
Funds raised through a GoFundMe, searchable as “Sheridan Gorman Memorial & Scholarship Fund” will support memorial activities and the creation of a scholarship in her honor.
“We give thanks for who she was, for the love she shared, and for the ways her life continues to live in us. And we are honest here, too. This loss hurts. The grief is real and heavy and unfinished. There is no explanation that makes it easier, no words that can repair what has been broken,” Rev. Chip Low of the First Presbyterian Church of Yorktown said.
He added that, “in this space, we do not rush. We do not try to make it better. Instead, we choose to be present—present with the family who carries this loss most deeply. Present with one another as neighbors, friends, classmates, teachers, and loved ones. Present with tears, with questions, with silence. Hold us together in this time. Remind us that we do not carry this alone.”
As the community gathered for the vigil, he said the light should be more than just symbolic.
“Let it reflect the light shared and brought into the world, and let it kindle something in us, a commitment to show up with compassion, to choose connection over isolation, to become bearers of light and love for this family, for one another, and for a world aching for both.”
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