An 18-year-old Loyola University Chicago student was gunned down while taking a walk with friends along Chicago's lakefront around 1:30 a.m. Thursday. Within hours, a progressive Chicago alderwoman suggested the victim bore some responsibility for her own death.
Sheridan Gorman, 18, of Westchester County, New York, was reportedly only a few months away from completing her freshman year. Jose Medina-Medina, a 25-year-old Venezuelan national, has been charged with her murder.
Shortly after the killing, Chicago Alderwoman Maria Hadden told Fox 32 Chicago that Gorman was in the "wrong place at the wrong time" and suggested she may have "startled" the individual who shot and killed her.
The backlash was swift, fierce, and entirely deserved.
According to Fox News, Gorman's family released a statement that stands in devastating contrast to Hadden's casual blame-shifting:
"What happened to Sheridan cannot be reduced to the idea of someone being in the wrong place at the wrong time. 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."
Read that again and then read what Hadden said. One comes from people who lost a daughter. The other comes from a politician who couldn't be bothered to place blame where it belongs: on the man who allegedly pulled the trigger.
The family went further:
"We cannot accept a world where moments like this become something people grow used to. We cannot allow ourselves to become desensitized to violence. When we begin to accept these tragedies as inevitable, we all become vulnerable to them. Apathy is not harmless—it allows these moments to repeat."
That last line could serve as a caption for Hadden's entire approach to public safety. Apathy is not harmless. It allows these moments to repeat. And Chicago keeps repeating them.
Social media erupted. The Manhattan Institute's Rafael Mangual captured the absurdity of Hadden's framing perfectly:
"Perhaps these politicians can put out a comprehensive list of the places we should avoid and the times we should avoid them so as not to get shot to death by strangers."
Comedian Tim Young called the response "disgusting." He was being generous.
New York City Republican Councilwoman Vickie Paladino connected Hadden's remarks to a broader pattern that conservatives have identified for years:
"This is how most Democrats think about crime, she's just saying it out loud."
Paladino continued:
"They have no interest in taking any kind of action, because they don't think any of it is a big deal. Criminals have a right to be criminals, don't get in their way, and who are we to judge."
She's right. Hadden didn't commit a gaffe. She revealed a worldview. In the progressive framework, crime is an environmental phenomenon, something that happens to people who wander into the wrong conditions. The victim startled someone. The victim was out too late. The victim was in the wrong place. Notice how every explanation points away from the person who committed the act.
The Department of Homeland Security said Sunday that Medina-Medina entered the U.S. during the Biden administration before being apprehended and released into the country. DHS also confirmed he had been previously arrested for shoplifting in Chicago.
So here is the sequence:
Every single checkpoint failed. Every institution that existed to prevent this outcome waved him through to the next one.
Former Trump campaign deputy communications director Caroline Sunshine framed it the way Hadden should have:
"The only person who was in the 'wrong place at the wrong time' was the illegal immigrant who should have never been allowed into our country."
What makes Hadden's response so revealing is that it wasn't calculated spin. It was instinct. A young woman is dead, an illegal immigrant with a prior arrest is charged with her murder, and the first impulse of a progressive elected official is to explain what the victim did wrong.
This is where the left's logic on crime and immigration collapses into itself. They insist that sanctuary policies make cities safer. They insist that catch-and-release is humane. They insist that enforcement is cruel. And when the predictable consequences arrive, they blame the girl for going on a walk.
Paladino called it exactly what it is: "That's what we're up against here."
Fox News Digital reached out to Hadden's office for comment. The silence, if it holds, will say plenty.
Sheridan Gorman was not in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was an 18-year-old college student walking along the lakefront of a major American city with her friends. In a functioning city, that is not a death sentence. In Chicago, under leaders like Maria Hadden, it's apparently your fault if it becomes one.