By Henry K. Lee, San Francisco Chronicle, March 29, 2011
To certain members of Your Black Muslim Bakery, murder was a laughing matter, a confessed bakery hit man said Monday.
Devaughndre Broussard chuckled in the trial of bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV and another member of the group as he recalled how one victim tried to run away before Broussard emptied an assault rifle at him.
Bey and the other member, Antoine Mackey, made fun of how another victim’s leg flew up in the air when he was riddled with rounds from a rifle, Broussard said.
In between the chilling details of those two slayings, Broussard testified for the first time about the shooting death of Chauncey Bailey, whom Bey allegedly ordered killed to prevent the Oakland journalist from writing about the black empowerment group’s financial collapse.
Bey told Broussard to learn where Bailey lived and “find out his routine,” Broussard told the jury in Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland. “He wanted us to take him out before he wrote that article.”
Asked by Deputy District Attorney Melissa Krum what that meant, Broussard replied, “Kill him.”
It was Broussard’s second day on the witness stand in the murder trial. He has confessed to being the gunman who killed Bailey with three shotgun blasts on Aug. 2, 2007, as the Oakland Post editor was walking to work at 14th and Alice streets in downtown Oakland.
Bey ordered up another slaying less than a month before Bailey’s death, telling Broussard to kill Odell Roberson, 31, the uncle of the man who shot and killed Bey’s brother, Broussard said.
He said Bey had initially wanted him to kill the father of Alfonza Phillips, who shot and killed Antar Bey during a botched carjacking in 2005.
Bey “wanted him whacked because his son killed his brother,” Broussard said, adding that Bey believed in “an eye for an eye.”
But after Broussard reported that he and Mackey couldn’t find the elder Phillips, Bey told him to kill Roberson, a “dope fiend” and transient who lived on the streets of Oakland near the now-defunct bakery, Broussard testified.
“Take him out when you get the chance, because it seems like we can’t get his pops,” Broussard said Bey told him.
Broussard, 23, burst into laughter on the stand when he recounted how Roberson had tried to run away when he leveled an SKS assault rifle at him. He said he had fired the rifle “until the clip was empty,” about eight to 10 rounds.
Broussard pleaded guilty to two counts of voluntary manslaughter in exchange for a 25-year sentence and a promise to testify against Bey and Mackey, both 25, in their murder trial.
Mackey is accused of killing a third victim, 36-year-old Michael Wills, in July 2007. Bey, who is accused of ordering the killing, boasted about “getting” a white “devil,” Broussard said.
Mackey and Bey made fun of how Wills’ leg flew up after he was shot, with both men shouting, “It’s good!” while raising their arms straight up, simulating a field goal, Broussard testified.
(Thanks to reader-researcher “W.”)
1 comment:
Today I received a book on this case I had ordered, "Killing the Messenger: A Story of Radical Faith, Racism's Backlash, and The Assassination of a Journalist." As the subtitle indicates, there are a lot of PC bromides in the book, but it has a lot of information.
The author, Thomas Peele, is an "investigative journalist." To his credit, Peele has a chapter on the NOI Zebra murders, and links them to the much less well known "East Bay killings," which you have referenced. The Muslim group in Oakland, California were involved in the latter, and maybe the former.
Chauncey Baily in 1974 was working for a small black newspaper in the Bay area and suspected the NOI was responsible before the arrests.
Bailey had a checkered career as a journalist as was editor of a free weekly paper in Oakland. "Yusuf Bey IV" ordered Bailey killed to stop an article on the NOI "Bakery."
The piece was only 500 words, single-source, with no attribution. Killing Bailey brought down Bey IV. The local politicians and media weren't interested until Bailey was murdered.
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