McGee's mother fetched all of these things as she sat in her Evergreen Park apartment Wednesday, trying to define her 18-year-old daughter as someone other than the accused murderer now charged in the Dec. 22 slaying of a South Holland cabbie.

"You couldn't imagine the pain I feel right now," said the 47-year-old mother, who did not want her name used. "It's like somebody took my heart out. I can't breathe."

On Wednesday, a Cook County judge in Bridgeview ordered McGee and Jimille Brown, 19, of Chicago, held on $1 million bond. Elliot Peterson, 22, of Chicago, was ordered held without bail.

All three are charged with the first-degree murder of cabdriver Abimbola K. Ogunniyi during a bizarre botched robbery.

[ Molotov cocktail proposed ]

Ogunniyi, described by friends as a gentle man who would do anything to help someone in need, moved to America from Nigeria in 1988. He was seeking a better life for himself and his family.

Prosecutors said in court that the trio hatched a plan -- detailed in writing -- to rob an armored car on the Southwest Side. The plan was to have the women somehow distract the armored car driver while Peterson brandished a Molotov cocktail.

"Using Molotov cocktails to rob an armed car strikes me as ill-conceived," said a law enforcement source close to the case. Peterson was the guy who was going to "pull the strings," the source said.

But things never progressed that far. The trio allegedly planned to use an SUV as a getaway vehicle. McGee's cell phone was used to call a cab, which arrived at an address in the 9700 block of South Pulaski the afternoon of Dec. 22, prosecutors said. All three got into the cab, and Peterson, armed with a sawed-off shotgun, then ordered Ogunniyi to pull into a nearby alley. With the shotgun to his head, the cabbie was told to undress and get out of his vehicle, prosecutors say.

As the women rifled through Ogunniyi's pockets, Peterson shot the cabbie in the thigh, prosecutors said. Prosecutors haven't said why Peterson might have shot Ogunniyi.

The suspects allegedly left the dying cabbie lying in the snow while they fled in his SUV. Investigators later traced the phone call made to the cab dispatcher back to McGee's cell phone.

McGee, Brown and Peterson have given videotaped statements, said Tandra Simonton, a spokeswoman with the Cook County state's attorney's office. None has any criminal history, she said.

[ Police: Brown pregnant ]

McGee's mother, in tears and in shock, told the Sun-Times Wednesday her daughter has said she knew nothing about a plan to rob either a cabdriver or an armored car. McGee thought she, Brown and Peterson, were taking a cab to McGee's mother's house to pick up some clothes, the mother said.

"She has a heart of gold," the woman said of McGee. "How she got caught up in this, I will never know."

Before her arrest, McGee was planning to take classes next month at Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills, hoping to eventually become a nurse, her mother said, adding she knows little about Brown, and never met Peterson.

Brown was apparently a criminal justice student at Kennedy-King College. Brown is pregnant with Peterson's child, police said.

SUV Taxi( front ) awaits dispatch orders in Near North, Chicago

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