A nine-year-old girl had just handed her father an ice cream cone and spoken her final words when a gunman, allegedly under the influence of drugs, shot her in an apparently unprovoked attack.
‘Here, Daddy, I got you an ice cream,’ Sarabi Medina told her father, Michael Medina, shortly before she was killed outside the family’s Chicago apartment in August 2023.
Sarabi was riding her scooter through Chicago’s Portage Park neighborhood when Michael Goodman, 46, approached her carrying a gun.
Prosecutors said Michael tried desperately to intervene, but Goodman followed Sarabi into the apartment and shot her in the head.
Michael tackled Goodman, causing the gun to discharge again. The second bullet struck Goodman in his left eye and left him blind in that eye, according to Law & Crime.
More than three years after the fatal shooting, Goodman pleaded guilty to murder. On Thursday, he was sentenced to 40 years in prison without the possibility of parole.
During the court proceedings, Goodman acknowledged taking several doses of ketamine on the day of the shooting—more than the recommended amount.
He said he had bought the drug on the dark web after his antidepressants failed to provide relief.
Nine-year-old Sarabi had just handed her father an ice cream cone and spoken her final words when a gunman shot her in a seemingly unprovoked attack
‘Here, Daddy, I got you an ice cream,’ Sarabi Medina told her father, Michael Medina
Sarabi was riding her scooter in Portage Park when Michael Goodman, 46, approached her with a gun
In a statement delivered by his attorney, Goodman said he could not remember 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.
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Goodman said he began having suicidal thoughts before his memory became unclear.
‘The last part of the vague memory I have is walking through my front door,’ he told the court.
Sarabi’s grieving father rejected Goodman’s account and maintained that the gunman had deliberately targeted his daughter.
‘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,’ Medina told ABC affiliate WLS after the sentencing.
Judge Tyria Walton sentenced Goodman to 40 years in prison, giving him credit for the approximately three years he has already spent incarcerated.
When one of Sarabi’s cousins called for a tougher sentence, Walton noted that Goodman would be elderly by the time he could potentially be released.
Goodman said in a statement read by his attorney that he had no memory of shooting Sarabi
He would be ’83 years old if he lives to see freedom. Statistically, that does not happen,’ the judge said.
Sarabi had been preparing to start fourth grade at Reinberg Elementary School when her life was taken.
Her death left her family and neighbors devastated. Those who knew her described the young girl as the center of her father’s world.
‘She was his world,’ Rene Aquino, a friend of Medina, said after the shooting.
‘You killed an innocent child, an innocent baby girl for what reason?’
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