WARNING, GRAPHIC CONTENT: Sarabi Medina was killed just moments after handing ice cream to her dad Michael Medina. She was shot in the head outside their apartment by Michael Goodman
A girl was tragically killed just moments after buying ice cream for herself and her dad. Sarabi Medina, 9, had been eagerly preparing to begin fourth grade at Reinberg Elementary School in Chicago when she fell victim to a horrific, unprovoked attack by a drug-crazed gunman in August 2023.
“Here, Daddy, I got you an ice cream,” she told her father, Michael Medina, justseconds before she was shot in the head outside their flat. On 5 August 2023, Sarabi had been scooting through the Portage Park neighbourhood when Michael Goodman, 46, approached her brandishing a firearm.
Prosecutors revealed that Michael desperately tried to step in, but Goodman ignored the father’s attempts and chased Sarabi towards her apartment block, where he fatally shot her in the head. Michael managed to bring Goodman crashing to the ground, and during the violent struggle that followed, the weapon discharged a second time, hitting Goodman in his left eye and leaving him permanently blind on that side, reports the Express US.
On Thursday, Goodman was sentenced to 40 years behind bars with no chance of parole after pleading guilty to Sarabi’s murder.
Goodman admitted that on the day of the killing, he had taken multiple doses of ketamine, which he had obtained via the dark web. He told the court he had been battling mental health problems and that his antidepressants had failed to work.
In a statement read out by his solicitor in court, Goodman claimed he had no memory of shooting Sarabi. “It was not the largest dose I had ever taken before, so I saw no reason that my experience would be any different than usual,” he said in the statement.
He insisted that he had experienced suicidal thoughts before his memory became unclear. “The last part of the vague memory I have is walking through my front door,” he said.
“I would trade my life for hers in a heartbeat,” Goodman’s statement continued. Despite this, Sarabi’s father disputed Goodman’s account, claiming his daughter had been deliberately targeted by the gunman.
“He talks. I was there that day. We were screaming at that man. That man wouldn’t look at us for nothing. He was focusing on killing my daughter,” Michael told ABC affiliate WLS after the sentencing.
Goodman was handed a 40-year prison sentence, with credit for the roughly three years he has already spent behind bars. Sarabi’s devastated friends and family have described her as the centre of her father’s universe.
“She was his world,” said family friend Rene Aquino following the shooting. “You killed an innocent child, an innocent baby girl for what reason?”.
Medina’s cousin, Juleesa Medina, stated that the family has no forgiveness for Goodman. “The first time I looked in his eyes I couldn’t help but think that was the last thing my cousin ever saw,” she said.
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