Second person charged in shooting death of Chicago judge
Earl Wilson (Cook County Sheriff’s Department)
A man who served 12 years for attempted murder and home invasion has been charged in the shooting death of a Cook County associate judge assigned to Chicago’s criminal court.
Earl Wilson, 45, was arrested late Tuesday afternoon and is charged with first-degree murder for the April 10 shooting of 66-year-old Judge Raymond Myles, the Chicago Tribune reported.
The judge’s 52-year-old girlfriend, who was not identified by the Tribune, was shot in the leg during the incident. Police maintain that the girlfriend was the target of the crime.
Wilson is being held without bond. Police have not disclosed if additional suspects are being sought.
Around 4:50 a.m. on April 10, the woman was shot outside Judge Myles’ home on the city’s South Side, and he was shot after confronting the shooter, the Tribune reported. His slaying is thought to be the first fatal shooting of a Chicago judge in three decades.
“Judge Myles was murdered when he tried to intervene and save the life of his female companion,” Cmdr. Rodney Blisset said at a news conference Thursday, DNAInfo reported.
On April 12, Chicago Chief of Detectives Melissa Staples said the incident was a “targeted robbery” and not connected to Myles’ work as a judge.
The girlfriend’s ex-husband is reportedly related to Joshua T. Smith, 37, who was charged April 13 with first-degree murder, attempted murder, aggravated battery with a firearm and armed robbery. Police allege Smith drove the getaway car after the shooting.
According to court records obtained by the Tribune, the woman discovered that her husband was married to someone else when the couple wed, and their marriage was declared invalid in 2015. The newspaper reports that her ex-husband obtained a protection order against her after he alleged she threatened to shoot him.
Myles, who had been a judge since 1999, was involved in several high-profile cases in Chicago courtroom. Among the suspects who appeared before him were two people accused in the 1993 Brown’s Chicken murders that took the lives of seven people, and a man charged in the slayings of three relatives of singer Jennifer Hudson.
