Not guilty plea in murder of Officer Michael Bailey

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Antwon Carter / photo from Chicago Police

Updated: September 13, 2011 12:00PM

A 24-year-old South Side man who allegedly bragged about gunning down Chicago Police Officer Michael Bailey pleaded not guilty to the officer’s murder on Tuesday.

Antwon Carter of the 1200 block of East 69th Street was charged July 26 with first-degree murder of a police officer and attempted armed robbery in connection with the case, in which Bailey was shot and killed just steps from his front door in the summer of 2010.

On July 27, Cook County Judge Israel Desierto ordered Carter held on $500,000 bond for an unrelated aggravated vehicular carjacking charge, a case in which he allegedly attacked a motorist at 75th and Cornell just days after Bailey was killed. He was later ordered held without bond for the murder.

At a hearing before Judge Stanley Sacks on Tuesday, Carter pleaded not guilty to the murder and attempted robbery of Officer Bailey, according to Cook County State’s Attorney’s office spokeswoman Tandra Simonton.

Bailey, 62, was shot to death while cleaning his black Buick Regal outside his home in the Park Manor neighborhood on the South Side about 6 a.m. July 18, 2010, in what authorities say was a botched robbery attempt.

Bailey, just weeks from retiring, had bought himself the Buick as a retirement present three weeks earlier. The father of three had just completed an overnight shift guarding then-Mayor Daley’s South Loop town house.

Sources told the Sun-Times that the break in the case came late last year from a fellow inmate who had crossed paths with Carter at Cook County Jail. According to the informant, the sources said, Carter “told his fellow inmates that he was involved in the killing of a policeman. He did not say Bailey. He used the location — 74th and Evans.”

Carter allegedly made a statement to police and prosecutors that he intended to rob Bailey, but Bailey pulled a gun and the two exchanged fire, the sources said.

A status hearing in the case is scheduled for Oct. 17, Simonton said.