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Police: gun linked to journalist’s slaying found in Black Muslim bakery raid
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) – Police are testing guns and other evidence recovered from raids that resulted in the arrest of seven members of an Oakland Black Muslim splinter group that are believed to have been involved in the murder of a journalist and two others.
Oakland Police Lt. Ersie Joyner said one of the guns found during the raids is thought to be the weapon that was used to slay Chauncey Bailey, a journalist who was walking to work Thursday morning when a masked gunman shot him.
Bailey, 57, was the editor of the Oakland Post, and had been working on a story about Your Black Muslim Bakery before he was ambushed and slain, his colleagues said.
Standing in a black suit with a bow tie, a member of the bakery organization said Friday that the accused crimes do not reflect the principles of his group.
”This is not a reflection of Dr. Yusuf Bey,” said Shamir Yusuf Bey in a sidewalk news conference in front of the bakery. The organization’s members all take the founder’s surname. ”We are all sons of Dr. Yusuf Bey. He has taught us morals, he has taught us how to be advocates in our community.”
Joyner said he believes the seven people arrested Friday include the people responsible for Bailey’s death. Police say they still do not have any motive for Bailey’s killing, and that they had no knowledge that he was working on a story about the bakery.
Before dawn on Friday, officers raided the Muslim group’s headquarters at the original bakery on San Pablo Avenue, as well as three houses in Oakland. They arrested seven people, including the son of the group’s founder, on various charges including homicide, robbery and assault.
”The search warrant yielded several weapons and other evidence of value including evidence linking the murder of Chauncey Bailey to members of the Your Black Muslim Bakery,” said Assistant Police Chief Howard Jordan, who said the raids were part of a yearlong investigation into a variety of violent crimes.
Those include two homicides earlier this year and a kidnapping and torture case in May, Joyner said.
Joseph Debro, an Oakland businessman who writes a column for the Post, said Bailey had recently asked him for information about Your Black Muslim Bakery’s financial troubles for a story Bailey was writing.
”To him it was just another story,” Debro said. ”He wasn’t apprehensive or anxious about it at all. He said he was working on a bunch of stories and this was one.”
Your Black Muslim Bakery was founded in 1968 by the late Yusuf Bey as a haven for struggling urban families. It sells natural baked goods alongside books by Malcolm X and other black leaders.
Bailey was a longtime reporter for the Oakland Tribune before becoming editor of the Post, a weekly newspaper geared toward the Bay Area black community, earlier this year.
He had written stories for the Tribune about the bakery and its founder when Bey was facing rape charges in Alameda County. Most of those charges were later dropped, although one was still pending when Bey died in 2003.
Bey’s son, Yusuf Bey IV, who was in custody Friday, took over the original bakery and several franchises. In 2005, he was accused of being the ringleader in a group of black Muslims who smashed liquor bottles in Oakland corner stores and berated the Muslim owners for selling alcohol to the black community, because alcohol is forbidden by Islam.
Your Black Muslim bakery has been plagued with financial problems for several years, culminating in a bankruptcy filing last October.
AP writers Bob Porterfield and Sudhin Thanawala in San Francisco contributed to this report.
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