[NYTr] Man Admits Slaying of Oakland Journalist

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Rick Kissell

Los Angeles Times - Aug 5, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-editor5aug05,1,6707684.story?coll=la-headlines-california&ctrack=4&cset=true 


Man reportedly admits slaying

A 19-year-old suspect in the fatal shooting of Oakland Post editor 
Chauncey Bailey confessed to police, a newspaper says.

By Tim Reiterman

SAN FRANCISCO --- A 19-year-old man arrested in raids connected to a 
Black Muslim bakery in Oakland was booked on murder and weapons charges 
Saturday after he was reported to have confessed to the street slaying 
of a journalist in that East Bay city.

Devaughndre Broussard, a handyman at Your Black Muslim Bakery, told 
investigators that he shot Chauncey Bailey, 57, because he was upset 
with the Oakland Post editor's articles about the bakery and its 
leaders and was concerned about articles he thought Bailey might have
in progress, the Oakland Tribune reported Saturday.

Police on Friday said that firearms recovered in pre-dawn raids of the 
bakery and three nearby residences by 200 officers were linked through 
scientific evidence to the slaying of Bailey, who was gunned down 
Thursday morning as he walked to work, as well as to two slayings near 
the bakery last month. The Tribune reported that police believe a 
shotgun found at Broussard's home when he was arrested was used to
shoot Bailey several times.

Broussard and six other people arrested Friday were not immediately 
charged. But a spokeswoman at Alameda County's Santa Rita Jail said 
Broussard was booked there Saturday on suspicion of second-degree
murder and a dangerous weapons charge.

Broussard, whose court arraignment is scheduled for Tuesday, also was 
held on an unrelated warrant on suspicion of shooting into a dwelling.

An Oakland Police Department spokesman and a homicide investigator who 
interviewed Broussard did not return calls. An attorney who previously 
represented the bakery's founder could not be reached for comment.

Violence is not uncommon in Oakland, a city of about 400,000 with 
persistent drug and gang problems. Over Friday night and Saturday 
morning, police said, there were three unconnected fatal shootings in 
far-flung parts of the town.

But Bailey's death aroused deep community concern because it occurred
in broad daylight and involved a well-known, longtime local newsman who 
grew up in Oakland. He was the first reporter assassinated in the
United States since 1993, according to the advocacy group Committee to
Protect Journalists.

Bailey, a former Oakland Tribune and Detroit News reporter,
recently became editor of the Oakland Post, a black community
newspaper. Walter Riley, attorney for the newspaper, said Friday that
Bailey had been working on an article detailing financial allegations
against the bakery, which has filed for bankruptcy, but that the piece
needed additional work before it could be published.

On Thursday, as police were quietly preparing to conduct raids
connected to the bakery, Broussard went looking for the editor in a
van, confronted him on the street and allegedly shot him, the Tribune 
reported. Later, police matched discharged shotgun shells at the scene 
to a shotgun found at Broussard's residence.

In recent months, the Tribune said, Broussard worked as a handyman
and occasionally as a cook at the bakery, which was founded in the late 
1960s and provided baked goods to natural food stores in the area.

Leaders of the Black Muslim group --- not affiliated with the Nation of 
Islam --- said they provide direction and jobs for youth, but the 
bakery's founder and spiritual leader, Yusuf Ali Bey, was charged in 
2002 with forcing an underage girl to have sex with him in the 1970s.
He died of cancer in 2003 while facing trial and additional allegations
of abuse from other females that his group denied.

Two years ago, several members were arrested in the vandalizing of two 
liquor stores and threatening of owners who sold alcohol to people in 
the black community. Last year, Yusuf Bey IV, one of the founder's
sons, was arrested on suspicion of running his car into a club bouncer
in San Francisco.