Sarabi Medina was looking forward to starting fourth grade when she was fatally shot near her family’s home in Chicago’s Portage Park neighborhood. She was nine years old. Moments before the shooting, she had handed her father an ice cream cone.
“Here, Daddy, I got you an ice cream,” she told him.
More than three years after the August 2023 shooting, Michael Goodman pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Cook County Judge Tyria Walton gave him credit for the roughly three years he had already spent in custody.
Her father tried to intervene
Goodman lived across the street from Sarabi’s family. At his initial bond hearing, prosecutors said he approached a group on the sidewalk at about 9:40 p.m. Sarabi had been riding her scooter that evening.
Prosecutors said her father, Michael Medina, tried to stop Goodman, who followed Sarabi into the apartment building
