OAKLAND, Calif. - Like many mornings before, Chauncey Bailey began Aug. 2 with a 15-minute walk to work along Oakland's Lake Merritt.

But just two blocks away from his office, the veteran journalist's life would end in gruesome fashion - all because of a story.

A masked gunman approached the editor and opened fire.

According to one witness, Bailey's last words were: "Don't kill me."

Devaughndre Broussard, 19, a handyman and member of Your Black Muslim Bakery, later confessed to the shooting, allegedly saying he did it because Bailey was snooping around the bakery's finances.

Bailey, 57, had spent his career focusing largely on issues affecting blacks in Oakland.

The last story he was investigating was no exception: a piece about the financial woes and violent history of Your Black Muslim Bakery, a natural-food business and spiritual institution founded by Yusuf Bey Sr.

Once a viable business that gave jobs and shelter to recovering addicts and ex-cons in Oakland's black community, the bakery began to crumble in 2003, when Bey died while awaiting trial for the rape of a 13-year-old girl.

After a series of violent deaths of bakery leaders, Bey's son, Yusuf Bey IV, emerged at 19 as CEO in 2005.

Police say the bakery changed under Bey IV.

"There was a division between the older bakery guys and the younger bakery guys," said Sgt. Michael Poirier of the Oakland Police. "Ideologically, they changed . . . They definitely got more violent."

Since Bey IV took over, he has been charged in a string of violent incidents, sometimes involving warped vigilantism. One time in 2005, he and about a dozen men in bow ties and dark suits and carrying metal pipes allegedly vandalized two liquor stores for selling alcohol to black members of the community.

Bey IV's reign ended a day after Bailey's brazen shooting, when the Oakland Police led a predawn raid on four Your Black Muslim Bakery properties. Bey IV, 21, and Broussard were among seven arrested.

The raid was the culmination of a two-month police investigation into a string of brutal crimes that staffers of the bakery were suspected of having a role in, including the kidnapping and torture of a mother and daughter in May, and two unsolved murders in July.

"It seems he was like, 'We will help the community by beating up liquor stores and killing people who do not live lifestyles we agree with,' " Poirier said about Bey IV.

Bey IV and two others were charged in the kidnapping case last week.

Word of Bailey's poking around circulated among the Bey family, Oakland Post publisher Paul Cobb said. And before Bailey's death, colleagues said he had received threats.

"I said to him, 'Do you ever worry about somebody coming after you?' " a colleague, Derrick Nesbitt, recalled. "He would have the same response all the time: 'What am I gonna do? It ain't going to happen. I'm not worried about it.' "