Off-duty Chicago officer fatally shot; third killed since May

A 62-year-old Chicago police officer less than a month from retiring was killed early Sunday as he returned home from an overnight shift, officials said.

Officer Michael Bailey was shot at about 6 a.m. outside his home on the city's South Side. He was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital and pronounced dead there.

Chicago officials say Bailey was cleaning his car when several people approached him and may have tried to steal the vehicle. No arrests have been made.

"He was coming home from work," Alderman Freddrenna Lyle said. "He had just bought a new car. He was out there shining up his new car and somebody accosted him."

Next month, Bailey would have turned 63, the mandatory retirement age for Chicago police. He was a 20-year veteran of the department.

Mayor Richard Daley called the shooting "absolutely outrageous."

"This is a tragic, stunning reminder of the senseless violence that stalks too many of our neighborhoods," Daley said in a statement. "Another Chicago police officer gunned down, this time just weeks before leaving a long career of protecting Chicago. ... Our prayers go out to the family of Officer Bailey. I knew him. He was a good man. He did not deserve this."

Bailey is the third officer to be shot and killed in Chicago since May.

Thor Soderberg, 43, was shot with his own gun on July 7 outside a police building on the South Side. Thomas Wortham IV, 30, was shot outside his parent's home on May 19 by men who were trying to steal his motorcycle. Suspects in both officers' shooting deaths have been charged with murder.

Wortham and Bailey both lived in Lyle's ward.

"How do you convince people to stay in a community when you have armed police officers shot down?" Lyle said. "It's devastating. ... It's like a war out here. I never thought that in my life it would be this way."