Cop killer gets life

Re the murder of CPD Officer Michael Bailey
In addition to a life sentence for the 2010 murder, Antwon Carter also received 35 years in prison for an unrelated carjacking.

By Andy Grimm@agrimm34 Dec 19, 2019, 1:42pm CST

Slain Chicago Police officer Michael Bailey AP


A man convicted of killing off-duty Chicago Police Officer Michael Bailey in a botched car-jacking attempt nearly a decade ago was sentenced Thursday to life in prison.

Before handing down the sentence for Antwon Carter, Cook County Judge Stanley Sacks pointed to multiple carjackings Carter committed in the weeks before and after he shot and killed Bailey, and to the fact Carter twice was caught with metal shanks inside the Cook County Jail while awaiting trial. The judge also tacked on an additional 35-year sentence for one of those carjackings.

Carter, 32, shook his head and gave a bemused frown as Sacks announced the life sentence. As the judge outlined the reasons for the 35-year sentence, Carter yawned. Before Carter was led from the courtroom, Sacks offered a bon mot to the defendant.

“Mr. Carter, you have your whole life ahead of you,” the judge said. “You’re going to be locked up the entire time.”Antwon Carter AP

Bailey, 62, and just weeks from retirement, had just finished a shift on former Mayor Richard J. Daley’s security detail on a July morning in 2010. As he was wiping down his brand-new Buick Regal in front of his Park Manor home, Carter spotted the gray-haired veteran officer— perhaps missing the police uniform Bailey wore under his tan baseball jersey— and shot Bailey three times. Bailey, who had bought the Buick as an early retirement gift to himself, managed to return fire.


While Judge Sacks said he felt “no compassion” for Carter, Bailey’s wife and daughters told reporters they had forgiven the gunman during the nine years it took for the case to go to trial.

The case against Carter hinged largely on statements he made, bragging about the killing, to friends, as well as a jail inmate who cut his hair and another inmate he encountered while in the lockup at a branch courthouse.

Sacks said that the attempted theft of Bailey’s car fit a pattern of other carjackings Carter committed, and Carter told police he was a “stickup boy” who preyed on eas— in one theft, his victim was a woman leaving a hospital with a cast on her leg.

“When you sit up here as long as Iv’e been sitting up here... I’m never usually at a loss for words,” Sacks said. “What can I say about Antwon Carter at this point other than he’s a dangerous person.”

Bailey was one of six CPD officers killed in 2010, one of the deadliest years on record for the department in recent decades. His daughter, Jada, would follow in Bailey’s footsteps and applied to the police academy after her father’s death.