Bailey gun tied to other crime

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Sep 20, 2007 | by Harry Harris

OAKLAND -- The shotgun police said was used by a member of Your Black Muslim Bakery to kill Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey on Aug. 2 also was used in a failed June 2005 assassination attempt on a former high-ranking member of the bakery organization, authorities confirmed Wednesday.

Police also say the same shotgun was used last December to blast out the windows of a car belonging to the ex-boyfriend of the girlfriend of Yusuf Bey IV, the now jailed leader of the bakery empire. Bey IV, 21, ascended to power after his older brother, Antar Bey, 24, was killed in October 2005 during an attempted carjacking.

Linking the shotgun to the attack on John Bey is the first public confirmation of the long-held suspicion there was a fierce internal battle for control of the lucrative organization between the bakery's old guard and younger family members.

Investigators suspected at the time bakery members had been involved in the attempt on John Bey's life, and when they also suspected the owner of the car in last December's attack also was targeted by bakery members, they compared the recovered shotgun shells and found a match.

Self-described bakery handyman Devaughndre Broussard, 19, is charged with Bailey's slaying. Homicide investigators said he has confessed to ambushing and killing the journalist because he was angry at him for stories he had written and was planning to write about the bakery organization.

Broussard is expected to enter a plea to the charges today. His attorney has claimed the confession was coerced and his client was put up to it by Bey IV, allegations investigators have strongly denied.

Even though Broussard was arrested with the shotgun, he has said he was not involved in the car shooting or the attack on John Bey, who was wounded several times outside his Oakland hills home, police said.

Police said they are inclined to believe him, primarily because he apparently was not part of the bakery organization at the time of the two earlier incidents. Even though police have the weapon, no suspects have been identified in relation to the assassination attempt on John Bey or the car shooting.

The weapon connection comes as no shock to John Bey, once a respected member of the Your Black Muslim Bakery empire built by the late-Yusuf Bey and manager of UD Security, the security outfit under the bakery's umbrella of businesses.

"That's so much better that they know (about the connection). It's unfortunate of course, but it's more they can put on these guys," John Bey said. "To me, that's the important thing. I really want them to pay for what they did, and then some."

Power struggle

The leadership struggle erupted after founder and spiritual leader Yusuf Bey died in 2003. Besides acts of violence, bakery members have been accused of fraud and identity theft. A bankruptcy judge has ordered the bakery at 5832 San Pablo Ave. and other properties put up for sale to pay off creditors.

John Bey watched the struggle for power among Yusuf Bey's followers after the patriarch died in September 2003. And he was not quiet about his suspicions regarding who was behind the disappearance and murder of Waajid Aljawaad Bey, 51, Yusuf Bey's trusted confidante who took over the empire after the elder Bey's death. John Bey was one of the last people to see Waajid Aljawaad Bey alive, and he was the one who reported him missing to police.

John Bey took control of the security company and he and his employees mostly stopped going to the bakery for meetings. He moved his family from a building owned by the bakery to a relative's house on Indian Way in the Oakland hills. Yet the attack on his own life several months later caught him by surprise.

John Bey's Montclair neighborhood was barely stirring when he said good-bye to his wife, walked down the driveway and settled into the driver's seat of his car about 6:30 a.m. June 17, 2005.

The first shot came just as he turned the key in the ignition. The impact blew apart the door panel and Bey felt a searing pain in his leg. The noise sounded like a pop; he thought for a crazy instant maybe it was a firecracker.

Then the blasts came faster and louder. The second one splayed a spider web of cracks in the driver side window. The next one sent the glass flying.

It seemed like everything was in slow motion. I have to get the hell out of here, he thought.

Bey jumped out of his car and ran in the opposite direction, yelling and screaming to get the neighbors' attention. He had 20 yards to get to the end of the block.

He ran right past the empty SUV several gunmen had parked at the end of the street. He cut between the houses on paths that connect one hilly street to another in Montclair. He was trying to double back to his own street when he fell and slid down the hill on his stomach, yelling to wake the neighbors.

He rolled across the street and ended up in a thorny bush and for a desperate moment his belt stuck on a hook in the fence, his would- be assailants driving toward him. Bey removed the belt, held up his suit pants and ran into a back yard, yelling at somebody, anybody to call the police.