Dem Who Claimed Murdered Girl Startled Killer Wants You to Know She Herself is the Real Victim

One of the most revolting aspects of the terrible story of the murder of Sheridan Gorman was the reaction of Chicago Alderwoman Maria Hadden, who is, of course, a Democrat. Gorman was a freshman at Loyola University Chicago who was walking on the beach with her friends when an illegal migrant named Jose Medina-Medina approached her and shot her in the head. In response, Haddon did her best to shift the blame from Medina-Medina to Gorman, claiming that she “startled” him, as if that justified murder, and completely ignored the fact that Medina-Medina was an illegal migrant who should never have had a gun or been in the country in the first place.

Now, however, Hadden wants you to know that the real victim of this episode is neither Sheridan Gorman or Jose Medina-Medina, but… Maria Hadden. She has partially walked back her egregious remarks on Gorman’s murder, but now she claims that those evil right-wingers are being mean to her for no reason, and thus she has been forced to close her office. It’s the classic leftist tactic: when one is drawing just criticism, claim victimhood.

For Hadden, it all started when she said:

From what I’ve been told so far, right, from what police know, from — from speaking to the students who were with her, um, it seems she might have… as they were just out, you know, people go out to the beach all the time, right? And they go out on the pier, they walk around, so that the kids were out doing normal, normal things people do in the neighborhood, and it sounds like this might have been a wrong place, wrong time, running into a person who had a gun. They might have startled this person at the end of the pier, unintentionally. Um, uh, but that’s all we know. So from what I’ve been told, what police investigation has turned up so far, what they’ve been able to share with the media and with Loyola University, we don’t believe there is cause for broader community concern.

Actually, there was and is tremendous cause for community concern. An illegal migrant, someone who should not have been in the country in the first place, murdered a random young woman in cold blood, but Hadden doesn’t want you thinking too much about that. So she tried to recast the murder as a case of a poor “person who had a gun” being “startled.” That interpretation of events doesn’t require any hard looks at immigration policy or at the Democrats’ self-serving opposition to ICE.

Now, however, Hadden has discovered that she is actually the real victim here. Fox News reported Thursday that Hadden has now “closed her office for the rest of the week in response to backlash over comments that a slain college student was in the ‘wrong place at the wrong time,’ citing safety concerns.”

Hadden explained: “My team and I are taking these precautions to ensure our safety and ability to maintain the level of service that you expect of us. I am still working as usual and will be out and about in our ward this week." Why does she have to ensure her safety and that of her team? Apparently because dastardly “right-wing extremists” are threatening her, although tellingly, she doesn’t actually come out and say she has been threatened.

Instead, she complained that her spin on the murder of Sheridan Gorman had "gone viral on conservative media," and that people of ill will had made more of them than what she had intended: "In an effort to make sense of a senseless situation,” Hadden explained, “I said things that landed wrong with some people. My comments were never intended to blame the victim or to imply that Sheridan should not have been out enjoying the park or that it was her fault that she was shot.” She did not, however, bother to explain what she could possibly have meant if she didn’t actually mean to blame the victim.

Related: After Illegal Migrant Murders Loyola Student, Loyola’s Paper Apologizes… to the Murderer

Nevertheless, she did apologize: "I sincerely apologize for any additional pain that my comments may have caused.” Unfortunately, she couldn’t end her statement there, but instead added: "The fact that some media outlets are intentionally creating sound bites to misconstrue my words during this tragedy is also unfortunate."

No one is misconstruing anything. She clearly placed the responsibility for the murder of Sheridan Gorman on Sheridan startling Jose Medina-Medina. And now, as leftist politicians nationwide grow increasingly open and unapologetic about their desire to do violence to their political opponents, she takes refuge in the popular leftist myth of violent patriots wishing to do her harm. As Joseph Welch asked Joe McCarthy long ago, “Have you no sense of decency?” And of course, Maria Hadden doesn’t. After all, she’s a leftist.