Local News

OAKLAND (CBS 5 / AP / BCN) ― A 19-year-old handyman for Your Black Muslim Bakery in Oakland was formally charged Tuesday with the assassination-style murder of a veteran journalist who was investigating the organization's troubled finances. Court filings indicated the teen had admitted to the crime and scientific tests linked him to the murder weapon.

DeVaughndre Broussard appeared in Alameda County Superior Court on charges that he gunned down Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey along a downtown street last week. His arraignment was postponed until next Monday so he could hire his own defense attorney after he refused the assistance of the Public Defenders Office.

Broussard appeared somber, mostly kept his head down and wore a red jail jumpsuit and shackles at the short hearing, guarded by seven bailiffs in the packed courtroom. He was being held without bail until he returns to court to finalize his legal representation and possibly enter a plea.

Judge Morris Beatus told Broussard that he was charged with first-degree murder, several counts of discharging a firearm and inflicting great bodily injury. All of those charges stemmed from Bailey's ambush shooting death near the corner of 14th and Alice streets in Oakland shortly about 7:30 a.m. last Thursday.

The judge also told Broussard that he was charged with being an ex-felon in possession of a firearm. Broussard has been on probation since last year for robbing and assaulting a San Francisco Municipal Railway passenger on Halloween 2005. He served a year in county jail in that case prior to being put on three years of supervised probation.

Alameda County Assistant District Attorney Tom Rogers said Broussard faces a sentence of 50 years to life in state prison if he's convicted of the murder and gun charges.

Oakland Police Assistant Chief Howard Jordan said earlier that Broussard confessed to fatally shooting Bailey, saying he was upset that the journalist was investigating the bakery's finances.

According to a court declaration filed Tuesday by Oakland police, Broussard said he killed Bailey because the journalist had "slandered" the bakery, an Oakland institution that was founded nearly 40 years ago, in several newspaper articles.

Broussard was one of seven people - including bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV - arrested last Friday in massive raids on the bakery and three related locations. .

The court declaration said police found the weapon that had killed Bailey only the day before when Broussard threw the Mossberg shotgun out a window at his residence. Police later determined that shell casings found at the scene where Bailey was killed, near the corner of 14th and Alice streets, matched the shotgun, according to the declaration.

Jordan said police don't believe Broussard acted alone, but they were still putting together how the plan was developed. Investigators are looking at the involvement of others associated with the group that that runs Your Black Muslim Bakery.

ADA Rogers said he doesn't plan to charge anyone else at this time in connection with Bailey's death.

Also Tuesday, three other men, including Yusuf Ali Bey IV, were charged in connection with an unrelated May kidnapping in Oakland.

Bailey, 57, worked as a reporter for the Oakland Tribune for more than a decade before becoming editor of the Post, a weekly newspaper geared toward the Bay Area black community, earlier this year.

On Monday, Saleem Bey, the son-in-law of bakery founder Yusuf Bey, said he was the main source in the slain editor's investigation and had agreed about two weeks ago to detail the group's inner workings.

Bey, 43, said he provided documents that cast light on what he alleged were fraudulent and unfair business practices by Yusuf Bey IV.

"I gave (Bailey) the stories. I knew everything that was going on. I thought it was dangerous for me, not him," Saleem Bey said.

Bailey had been investigating the bakery, but the newspaper could not verify several details of the story and never ran it, said Oakland Post lawyer Walter Riley, who would not confirm Saleem Bey as Bailey's source.

A lawyer representing Yusuf Bey IV in several other criminal cases said she believed a property dispute with Saleem Bey's side of the family may have motivated efforts to discredit her client.

"I'm not at all convinced just how reliable that the information that was provided to Chauncey Bailey might be, because I know there were bad feelings between these two factions of the family," defense attorney Lorna Brown said.

Your Black Muslim Bakery was founded decades ago by Yusuf Bey with the goal of providing support and a haven for Oakland's poor and had grown to include a security service, a school and other businesses. The organization is a regional splinter group that is not affiliated with the Nation of Islam, or with other area Muslim groups.

In recent years, financial and other problems had surfaced at the organization, which filed for bankruptcy last October.

In 2002, Yusuf Bey was accused of raping a girl who worked for him. He died of cancer in 2003 while awaiting trial. His appointed successor later disappeared and his body was found buried in the Oakland hills in a still-unsolved crime.

Yusuf Bey's 23-year-old son, Antar Bey, took over the group's leadership until he was killed in 2005 in a what police called a botched carjacking attempt. His brother, 21-year old Yusuf Bey IV, then took over.

Several of the business entities have been suspended by California's Secretary of State and owe substantial state and federal taxes, according to public records.

Health officials shuttered the group's bakery operations Friday over what they called unsanitary conditions.

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