A 35-year-old Chicago man has been handed a 13-year sentence for shooting and killing a man on the Eisenhower Expressway while he was on bail for an attempted murder case. He got another four years for a DUI, which he also got while on bail for the attempted murder charge.
According to court records, Antwan Carter posted a $10,000 cash deposit in August 2020 to be released from custody in a 2018 attempted murder case. He had been held in jail for nearly two years, but a judge granted a motion to reduce his bond due to concerns about the spread of COVID-19 in the Cook County Jail during the pandemic’s early days.
Ten months later, Carter and his fiancée, Ashley Hardrick, came to police attention after a car crash near the 1000 block of North California Avenue in Humboldt Park. Witnesses reported seeing a man and a woman walk away from the wreck. Around the same time, Hardrick called 911 to report her car stolen, prosecutors claimed. Police stopped the pair a block away.
Carter allegedly smelled of alcohol and prosecutors said his blood alcohol level was .130 — well over the legal limit. During their investigation, cops discovered the crashed vehicle had just been reported stolen by Hardrick herself.
Carter was charged with aggravated DUI and reckless driving, while his girlfriend was charged with filing a false complaint. (She eventually received probation.)
Investigators later determined that Carter did something else while he was on bail for the attempted murder: He participated in a deadly expressway shooting.
Just after midnight on April 12, 2022, Carter was in a red Dodge Durango that followed another car from a nightclub in Harvey onto the inbound Eisenhower Expressway, prosecutors said. As the vehicles neared Ashland Avenue, shooters in the Durango opened fire.
The 22-year-old driver of the other car was shot in the head and died. Three passengers in that vehicle were also shot and wounded; a fourth was unharmed. Both cars crashed, and video allegedly showed Carter and three others fleeing the Durango near Damen Avenue and hiding in nearby alleys.
State police investigators found an AK-47-style rifle in the Durango. Carter’s fingerprint was on the front passenger door, and his DNA was found on the rifle’s trigger and grip, prosecutors said. Three phones were also found in the SUV, with Carter’s DNA on two of them.
Last week, Carter pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the expressway shooting. Judge Thomas Byrne handed down the 13-year prison term. Byrne also gave Carter a four-year sentence for the DUI case.
In a bit of good news for Carter, Byrne last year found him not guilty in the attempted murder case he was on bail for at the time of the DUI and highway shooting. However, Byrne last week also refused to issue Carter a certificate of innocence in the case, court records show.
According to Illinois Department of Corrections records, Carter is expected to be paroled in November 2027 after serving half of his 13-year second-degree murder sentence.
