OAKLAND, Calif. -- Bay Area journalist Chauncey Bailey was gunned down almost exactly four months ago, police say it was because of a series of stories he was working on about a violent group working out of a store called "Your Black Muslim Bakery."

Since then, a large group of Bay Area reporters, editors and producers have been working to complete Bailey's work under the name of the Chauncey Bailey Project. Although the project's work is far from complete, it has been able to reconstruct the last 24 hours of Bailey's life.

It started early in the first day of August this year. Bailey habitually woke early – 6 a.m. was about right for him. He walked to work from his home on the east side of Lake Merritt to the Oakland Post newsroom on the west side.

It was a full, if routine, day for him. He left late that night and returned to his funky old apartment house.

While he slept, a 19-year-old man named DeVaughndndre Broussard drove by Bailey's home, showing it to two other men, he later told authorities.

On the sunny morning of August 2^nd , Bailey once again awoke early and walked to the Oakland Post, where he had been recently named editor.

"He was very excited about writing the lead story," recalled Jack Naidu, production chief at the Post.

A disrupting and prolonged garbage strike was on in much of the East Bay and Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums was getting considerable pressure to intervene and help settle it.

An AC Transit bus driver was reporting that a man in a black ski mask had looked inside her bus. What was a most disturbing to her was the black sawed off shotgun he was holding.

At about the same time, Bailey stopped at a MacDonald's on 14^th Street and bought himself a – and a homeless man – a meal and walked the last block of his life.

Broussard told police that after he realized Bailey had walked to work – not taken the bus as he sometimes did – he drove down to Alice and 14th streets in downtown Oakland.

"I was waiting in front of the elevator just to go work and we heard two shots, two or three shots and me and few other guys leaned out and said 'what sounded like a shotgun.' And seen a figure running across the street," said Ivan Winzer, who was working at a nearby construction site.

"The man with the gun pointed the gun at the man on the sidewalk and shot the man twice. The man fell down on the sidewalk. The killer man turned and started to walk away," one witness who asked not to be identified in this story told Oakland police.

After Broussard was arrested the next day during a raid on "Your Black Muslim Bakery," he confessed to homicide investigators.

Broussard: "I hop out of the van.. left the van running. And then some people saw me, and then that made me.. that made me a little nervous. So I ran up."

Police: "What happened when you shot him?"

Broussard: "He fell."

Police: "And when he fell, what happened then?"

Broussard: "Shot him again. Then again."

Broussard has since recanted the confession but remains in the Alameda County Jail at Santa Rita awaiting trial.

Bailey is buried at the Holy Sepulcher Cemetery in Hayward. His story and his work, however, go on.