Friends and relatives of Charles Baird gathered outside a Will County courtroom Wednesday, tears of relief streaming down their faces as they embraced one another after a judge convicted a Harvey man in the 19-year-old’s shooting death at a New Lenox gas station.
Baird’s family waited almost five years for closure after their middle child was fatally shot outside the Circle K gas station in May 2020, his mother, Jennifer Baird, said. As she entered the courtroom Wednesday, she described feeling an overwhelming sense of nervousness, the same gut-wrenching anxiety she felt when police arrived at her doorstep to tell her Charles had been shot.
“Now we can sleep a little easier knowing that Charlie’s killer is going to be behind bars, hopefully for a long time,” Baird said. “He tore a member of my family away from us for what? A car.”
After a six-day bench trial, Will County Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak found the defendant, who was 16 at the time of the shooting, guilty of two counts of first-degree murder.
The Daily Southtown isn’t naming the defendant because he was a juvenile when charged.
The Circle K security footage, his involvement in stealing a black SUV from Lockport, the discovery of a red Hyundai outside his home, the shooter’s description matching his clothes and unique gait, DNA recovered from the SUV, statements to police about carrying a gun, jail phone calls to a witness and eyewitness testimony from an inmate present during the shooting, influenced her guilty verdict, Bertani-Tomczak said.
Just hours before the shooting, Charles shared a Mother’s Day dinner with his family, said his goodbyes and never returned home, his mother said.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she couldn’t be by his side when he was hospitalized and later died from his injuries, she said.
Baird was fleeing for his life when he was shot in the back, prosecutors said.
“I want to ask (the defendant), why did you have to shoot him?” Baird said. “He was running away from you and you chase him and shoot him in the back. Why? What kind of monster does that?”
Baird, a Lincoln-Way West High School graduate, was living with his parents and working as a cook at Red Robin in Orland Park at the time of his death.
Prosecutors said Baird parked his car at a gas pump and entered the Circle K store. Realizing he had forgotten his wallet, he returned to retrieve it and went back inside.
Meanwhile, an SUV that had been stolen from Lockport two days earlier slowly drove around the parking lot, stopping several times before finally parking at a gas pump across from Baird’s car, testimony revealed.
Marquez Whitfield said he got out of the SUV holding a gun and tried the door handle on Baird’s car. Finding it locked, he returned to the vehicle. He then handed the gun to the defendant, who exited the SUV when he saw Baird walking back toward his car, he said.
The defendant confronted Baird, ordering him not to move, Whitfield said. When Baird turned around to flee back toward the store, the defendant shot him in the back and then drove away from the scene, he said.
Samantha Kerins, a Will County public defender representing the Harvey man, argued during closing statements that Whitfield was not a reliable witness, suggesting he may have lied to avoid facing felony murder charges for his own involvement.
“He lied, judge. He’s a liar,” Kerins told the judge. “It’s the old adage: the first one to talk gets to walk. He was saving himself.”
However, Bertani-Tomczak said she found Whitfield’s testimony, given in exchange for immunity, to be credible.
“What he told in court is what I saw in the video,” she said.
The Harvey man’s defense team portrayed him as a young teen who was wrongfully charged.
“He was 16-years-old with a gun in his hand,” Baird said. “He wasn’t a little innocent boy, a 16-year-old boy.”
Post trial motions and possible sentencing are scheduled for May 21 at the Will County Courthouse in Joliet.
Baird’s family has maintained a memorial for him at the Circle K. Baird said the gas station is allowing them to maintain it indefinitely.
The memorial includes a cross crafted by Charlie’s friend, Nathan McAvoy, a garden flag featuring Charles’ face and the words “Forever in our hearts,” a thank-you note from the Baird family, and two stones with messages about Charles being in heaven.
One of the stones is cracked, its broken piece lying among the other tributes, and though the flowers that once adorned the memorial are gone, it mostly remains intact.
In the summertime, Baird said the memorial is more lively, but over the last few months, after breaking her leg and her husband’s illness, they haven’t had time to tend to it.
Still, Baird said she intends to keep her son’s memory alive.
“It’s a celebration for Charlie, because he identified his killer,” she said. “The police did an awesome job, and all agencies, to get him because he wasn’t a good kid. He showed absolutely no remorse for what he had done.”
smoilanen@chicagotribune.com
