The Venezuelan illegal immigrant accused of killing Loyola University student Sheridan Gorman was caught with a weapon down his pants inside the Chicago prison where he awaits his murder trial.
Jose Medina-Medina, 26, was caught with a 6-inch shank in his pants when Cook County jail officials searched the suspected killer on Thursday, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office said, according to NBC Chicago.
Staff inside the Illinois lock-up received reports that Medina had the makeshift weapon in his possession before the pat-down just after 8 a.m.
Officials described the shank as a “sharpened piece of metal with a handle fashioned out of medical tape.”
Medina was charged with possession of contraband in a penal institution, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office announced Friday.
It was not revealed what Medina had planned to do with the shank before it was confiscated.
Gorman, a freshman at the private Jesuit university, was fatally shot during a random attack while she was searching for the northern lights with a group of friends near campus in the early morning of March 19.
Medina allegedly jumped at the group while wearing a mask and fired a single shot, striking the 18-year-old Yorktown Heights, NY-native in the back.
Medina was arrested and charged with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, three counts of aggravated assault/discharge of a firearm, and aggravated unlawful possession of a weapon.
He was booked into the Cook County Jail on March 23, where he has been held without bond since.
He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and would face a maximum sentence of life in prison with no parole after Illinois abolished the death penalty in 2011.
Medina’s defense attorney argued he’s cognitively challenged from a previous gunshot wound to the head he suffered during a robbery while he was living in Colombia with his mother.
The injury left Medina with a part of his brain missing and forced him to relearn basic functions like walking and talking, the defense attorney claimed.
“Today he has the brain development of a child,” lawyer Julie Koehler told a judge during Medina’s arraignment.
Gorman’s parents blasted the failed policies that allowed their daughter’s alleged killer to illegally enter the country in 2019 and walk free around the streets before the murder.
“I don’t care what side of the aisle politically people are on, or if you’re right in the middle like us. This can’t happen. We’ve got to make changes,” Sheridan Gorman’s mother, Jessica, told “CBS Mornings” in April.
“There’s definitely policies that contributed to this happening and we can’t save Sheridan but we can’t just not do anything,” Thomas Gorman added during the interview.