He may have been a cold-blooded killer and "soldier" in Your Black
Muslim Bakery, but Devaughndre Broussard was crying like a child after
a few minutes alone with bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV. That night in August 2007, Broussard - who had just been caught
trying to get rid of the shotgun used the day before to kill Oakland
Post Editor Chauncey Bailey - held out for hours under police
interrogation. Suddenly, Oakland police presented Broussard with Bey, a man who,
although just two years his senior, he had trusted and followed - but
who had just identified him to investigators as Bailey's killer. Broussard demanded to talk to Bey alone. In those moments, Bey's power over his follower was supreme. Bey had ordered him to shoot the journalist, Broussard said, but now
he was telling him he had to take sole responsibility for the good of
the bakery, a black self-empowerment group that had been an Oakland
institution for nearly 40 years. He promised him an easy life in return
once he got out of prison. Broussard, then 19, was far from a gullible weakling. When he
turned against Bey last month and told his story to an Alameda County
prosecutor, Broussard - the hardened product of housing projects and
group homes - made it clear he knew the reality of the streets. He had
even read Machiavelli, he said.
A way to get a job, diploma
In his year at the bakery, Broussard had developed a skepticism
bordering on contempt toward the "con" that Bey was running - "that
religious s-," being pushed by a young man with a couple of houses and
luxury cars who called on his followers to sacrifice. But at the same time, he embraced the bakery's discipline as a way
to get a job, earn a high school diploma, then get a college education
- because, he said, "I knew I was destined for something." Only too late, he said, did he realize he had thrown his life away. Devaughndre Broussard grew up in housing projects and group homes
in San Francisco's Western Addition and, later, with his father in
Richmond. By 18, he was a high school dropout jailed for robbery. But at points in his childhood, he had shown potential. When he was
15, Broussard took part in a mentorship program at UC Berkeley's Haas
School of Business and won a $100 savings bond for showing how best to
invest a hypothetical $1 million. Now, a day before he was to get out of San Francisco jail in July
2006, a friend asked him what he intended to do. "S-! Go back to the
'hood," Broussard, who is now 21, said during a five-hour interview in
March with Deputy District Attorney Chris Lamiero, the prosecutor in
the Bailey case. SOURCE:SFGATE.COM
