A 19-year-old handyman at a Black Muslim organization was charged with murder Tuesday in the shooting death of a journalist who was investigating the group’s troubled finances.
DeVaughndre Broussard, who worked at Your Black Muslim Bakery, appeared in Alameda County Superior Court on charges that he gunned down Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey last week. His arraignment was postponed until Monday so he could hire his own attorney. He was being held without bail.
Oakland Police Assistant Chief Howard Jordan has said Broussard confessed to the killing, saying he was upset Bailey was investigating the bakery’s finances. Police don’t believe Broussard acted alone, Jordan said.
He was one of several people arrested Friday in raids on the bakery and related locations. Police said they found the weapon that had been used to kill Bailey only the day before.
Broussard was put on probation last year for robbing and assaulting a San Francisco Municipal Railway passenger on Halloween 2005.
Bailey, 57, worked for the Oakland Tribune for more than a decade before this year becoming editor of the Post, a weekly newspaper geared toward the Bay Area black community.
Source gives details
Saleem Bey, 43, the son-in-law of bakery founder Yusuf Bey, said he was the main source in the Bailey’s investigation and had agreed about two weeks ago to detail the group’s inner workings.
He said he provided documents that cast light on what he alleged were fraudulent and unfair business practices by the group’s CEO, Yusuf Bey IV, 21, who also was arrested in Friday’s raid.
“I gave (Bailey) the stories. I knew everything that was going on. I thought it was dangerous for me, not him,” Saleem Bey told the San Francisco Chronicle.
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 for 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 nearly 40 years 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 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.