OAKLAND -- The Mossberg shotgun used to kill journalist Chauncey Bailey was stolen from an Oakland liquor store trashed by members of the Your Black Muslim Bakery in a violent attack that was caught on videotape in November 2005.

According to a report in Saturday's San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland investigators have positively identified the murder weapon as one stolen when members of the bakery sect trashed the New York Market in West Oakland on the night of Nov. 23, 2005.

Four men, including Bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV, remain charged in the vandalism case and are awaiting the conclusion of a preliminary hearing.

Two bakery members -- Tamon Halfin, 19, and James Allen Watts, 31 -- pleaded no contest to one count each of felony vandalism in the store trashing and were sentenced to five years' probation in 2006.

Forensic evidence has also determined the gun used to kill Bailey was used in an attempted assassination of John Bey, the ex-boyfriend of the girlfriend of Yusuf Bey IV. In the 2005 attack John Bey was wounded several times outside his Oakland hills home but survived.

Despite the convictions, the videotape of the vandalism and pending court cases, Oakland police never executed a search warrant at the bakery's non-defunct San Pablo Avenue headquarters to look for the shotgun until after the Bailey slaying.

Oakland Assistant Police Chief Howard Jordan defended the action on Friday.

"My understanding is that they didn't have enough probable cause to get a warrant," Jordan told the San Francisco Chronicle, adding that the store owner who said his gun was stolen "didn't have enough information on the gun."

"It's a little more involved in getting a search warrant than an arrest warrant," he told the paper. "Looking at the totality of circumstances, I don't think we felt at the time that a vandalism and a weak stolen-gun case was enough to go smashing in the door."

Alameda County Assistant District Attorney Tom Rogers told the paper he would need to know more facts before determining whether police had probable cause to do a search of the bakery following the store trashing.

A former Your Black Muslim Bakery handyman -- 19-year-old Devaughndre Broussard -- has been charged with walking up to Bailey on a downtown Oakland street and shooting him three times with the shotgun. He told investigators he committed the slaying to be a "good soldier" because Bailey was investigating the bakery's business dealing.

He remains jailed on murder charges.