Chicago police arrest Rogers Park man in Loyola slaying

Caroline Kubzansky and Deanese Williams-Harris, Chicago Tribune on Mar 21, 2026

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CHICAGO — Chicago police have arrested a 25-year-old Rogers Park man in connection with Thursday’s fatal shooting of Loyola University freshman Sheridan Gorman, according to records obtained by the Tribune.

An arrest report obtained by the Tribune offers no information about a possible motive for the shooting, which took place shortly after 1 a.m. on the Loyola Beach Pier. It states that witnesses told police a man wearing black clothes and a black mask pointed a gun at Gorman and fired one round at her as she tried to run away.

Nearby surveillance video captured the suspect a few minutes after the shooting walking westbound to Pratt Avenue, according to the report. Police were able to identify the man, in part, because he of his “distinct limp.” The suspect then entered a nearby apartment building, the report stated, and appeared on the building’s internal surveillance cameras without a mask.

The Tribune is not naming him because he has not been charged. Cook County court records show the suspect has a single misdemeanor charge for shoplifting from the State Street Macy’s in June 2023.

A judge issued a warrant for him in that case after he failed to appear for a court date. Records show the warrant was still outstanding as of September 2023.

A police report obtained by the Tribune offered scant details about the shooting, only stating that Rogers Park (24th) District police found Gorman on the pier at Loyola Beach in Rogers Park with a gunshot wound to the back.

Officers recovered a single shell casing about 40 feet from Gorman’s body, the report stated. Police said in a statement she’d been walking with friends when a gunman walked up to them, pulled out a weapon and fired at them.

Gorman, of Yorktown Heights, New York, was studying business at Loyola and involved with the Christian campus group Cru, friends said at a memorial service Thursday night.

Classmates described Gorman as cheerful and “always smiling,” with a good reputation around campus despite the short time she spent there.

In a statement released Saturday morning before news of the arrest, Gorman’s family said she had been out with her friends Thursday in hopes of seeing the northern lights.

Describing Gorman as someone with “a way of leaving people better than she found them,” her family said she “was exactly where she should have been — close to campus, surrounded by friends, living her life.”

“What happened to Sheridan cannot be reduced to the idea of someone being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” the statement said. “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.”

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(Tess Kenny contributed.)

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