CrimeWatch

OAKLAND (BCN) ― A defense lawyer told jurors Monday that Alfonza Phillips is innocent of charges he murdered former Your Black Muslim Bakery chief executive Antar Bey at an Oakland gas station two years ago and alleged that the incident instead resulted from an ongoing power struggle at the bakery.

In his opening statement in Phillips' trial, Alameda County Assistant Public Defender Leonard Ulfelder said, "This was not a random carjacking, but a deliberate assassination by a group with a motive to kill for personal gain," apparently referring to other leaders at the Oakland-based bakery.

However, Ulfelder didn't provide any specifics to back up his claim and didn't indicate if he would call any defense witnesses in the case.

Prosecutor Colleen McMahon said Oakland police initially looked into the possibility that the death of Bey, 23, at the Union 76 gas station at 55th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way on Oct. 25, 2005, was due to the power struggle that occurred after bakery founder Yusuf Bey died in 2003.

But McMahon said she believes Phillips, now 22, killed Antar Bey for a more basic reason: he wanted to carjack Bey's $75,000 BMW 745 sedan both because he wanted to have the car and because he wanted to give its "very expensive" 22-inch rims to his girlfriend, U.S. Postal Service employee Althea Foy, now 24.

She alleged Phillips shot Bey once in the back for a "very callous, senseless, yet simple reason."

About 10 of Bey's family members and bakery associates attended Phillips' trial Monday and some of them cried softly as photographs of his bloody body were shown to jurors.

McMahon said Foy's stepfather, whom she admitted is a drug addict and convicted felon who has received money and other favors for his testimony, came to Oakland police about a week after the shooting incident and said Phillips was Foy and had admitted he killed Bey because he wanted to steal Bey's BMW and give its tire rims to Foy.

McMahon said prosecutors realize that the stepfather's testimony isn't enough evidence by itself but she believes that statements by other witnesses and gas station videotapes corroborate his story.

The bakery has been in the news in recent months because bakery handyman Devaughndre Broussard, 19, is accused of murdering journalist Chauncey Bailey in Oakland on Aug. 2, allegedly because he was upset about articles Bailey had written about the bakery.

In addition, the bakery is in bankruptcy proceedings and current bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV, 21, who is Antar's younger brother, and four other bakery associates are charged with kidnapping and torturing two Oakland women on May 17.

Yusuf Bey IV also faces numerous other charges throughout the Bay Area.

Antar Bey took control of the bakery after his predecessor, Waajid Aljawwaad Bey, disappeared in 2004. Waajid Aljawwaad Bey's body was found in a shallow grave in East Oakland in July 2005 but the crime has never been solved.

In June 2005 another family leader, John Bey, survived an apparent assassination attempt in which he was shot at several times in his neighborhood in Oakland's Montclair District. That crime also hasn't been solved.

Foy testified reluctantly as the first prosecution witness Monday.

McMahon said Foy had failed to appear in court earlier this month, so authorities arrested her and have been holding her in the Alameda County Jail to guarantee she would testify.

Foy, who looked down at the ground during most of her testimony, admitted she told Oakland police several weeks after Antar Bey was killed that Phillips admitted to her that he had shot Bey.

But Foy said she made that statement only after homicide Sergeants Derwin Longmire and Tim Nolan had interrogated her for nearly five hours and had threatened her.

"They told me if I didn't cooperate, they would tell the Muslims and they would come after me and my family."

However, McMahon told jurors in her opening statement that Longmire and Nolan will testify that although Foy was "uncooperative" when they first started talking to her they never threatened her.

McMahon said that although Foy has tried to minimize the extent of her relationship with Phillips, authorities recorded a phone call he made to her from jail last year in which she said, "I love you" to him four times and he told her three times "to stay silent."

Testimony in the trial will resume on Tuesday.

(© CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Bay City News contributed to this report.)