Bailey gun tied to other crime

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

"I was banging on the French doors and this older lady comes to the door, I had blood on my face and she wasn't sure, so I just sat down and faced that house, to see if they were coming for me," Bey recalled.

The next thing he heard was police sirens.

Bey is circumspect when he mulls over why he might have been a target. He thinks people who controlled the bakery were upset they weren't getting any money from the security operations.

"I feel this more or less validates everything we've been trying to get across from Day One," he said. "We're not finished yet but I feel more weight should be given to the things we said about the (bankruptcy and other illegal activities), and everything I've said since Feb. 27, 2004, when Waajid disappeared."

John Bey survived his attack, but as soon as he got out of the hospital he and his wife packed a duffel bag, grabbed their kids and left town. His relative who owned the house on Indian Way had lived there for 30 years, but she never lived there again.

"I just want it to be resolved, and get Waajid's murder solved, and we'll deal with what happens after that," he said. "I don't want my children, my mother, my relatives, to be afraid to associate with us. I don't want people to be worried."

Bailey's death

Whether Bailey was looking into a possible connection between those earlier shootings is not known. Homicide investigators were not sure of a motive when they first responded to the 200 block of 14th Street where Bailey had been gunned down.

But after finding three expended shotgun shells and hearing from Bailey associates he had been working on a story about the bakery organization, investigators immediately had police criminalists do a comparison between those shells and the ones recovered at the earlier shootings. They quickly learned the shells matched.

Police were already planning to raid the bakery and associated residences on Aug. 3, the day after Bailey was killed.

Police say they had no idea Broussard or bakery leaders were upset with Bailey before he was killed on Aug. 2. If he had been threatened by bakery members, there is no record he ever reported it to police.

Besides shotguns, police also were looking for a gun used in the murder of two men in July not far from the bakery as well as evidence in the kidnapping and torture of two women in May by suspected bakery members. Bey IV and two other bakery members were subsequently charged in the kidnapping.

Several guns were recovered in the raids, but the shotgun was the only one matched to any of the cases, Sgt. Lou Cruz confirmed.

Police are not sure why the shotgun was never disposed of and one investigator said it looks like "whoever needed the gun used the gun."

Broussard was arrested climbing out the window of a duplex on 59th Street moments after he threw the shotgun out the window.

The gun believed used in the two July murders was not found at any of the sites raided by more than 200 Oakland police and officers from other agencies.

Later that night, Broussard confessed to Cruz and Sgt. Derwin Longmire that he killed Bailey and denied involvement in the other shotgun attacks.