An Oakland man was released on parole after being convicted of murder and had a new attitude and message for youth. Just 18 months later, he was killed in a targeted shooting.

OAKLAND – Lavell Stewart Jr. has fulfilled the promise he made to himself after three decades in state prison.

After his parole in 2022, he vowed to help the children of East Bay so they don't go down the same path that put him behind bars at age 24. He was convicted of murdering the son of a well-known and controversial Oakland figure.

He promoted positivity on social media and worked with troubled Richmond youth, hoping to be someone “they could talk to,” he said in a 2023 interview.

But his new journey ended abruptly after 18 months outside prison walls.

Stewart was shot and killed by an as-yet-unidentified gunman near 14th and Campbell streets in West Oakland on May 18. Police are still investigating the case but say they have few leads, no suspects and no clear motive other than indications that Stewart was targeted by his killer in an area he was known to frequent.

Stewart, 53, spent nearly 30 years behind bars before his untimely death. He was convicted in 1996 of the murder of 21-year-old Akbar Bey – the son of Your Black Muslim Bakery founder Yusuf Bey – and sentenced to 60 years to life in prison. At the time, the bakery was an Oakland institution and its founder a man of political and spiritual influence. His empire would crumble over the next decade.

Akbar Bey was shot and killed outside the Omni Club on Shattuck Avenue in Oakland on September 1, 1994. Police claimed Stewart was angry about losing $1,200 worth of marijuana to a thief and blamed it on either Bey or one of the three or four men he was chatting with. Angry, he confronted the group with a friend nicknamed “Fat Lester.” Bey denied stealing the weed and told Stewart to get lost; Stewart responded by shooting Bey twice in the head and twice in the chest.

Police arrested Stewart the next day. From jail, he allegedly tried to intimidate a woman who witnessed the shooting by calling her and saying, “This isn't a threat, but … when you go to court, you're invoking the Fifth Amendment.” His trial attorney, Gene Peretti, argued the killing was self-defense based on Stewart's claim that Bey told a friend, “Fuck that motherfucker, man,” referring to Stewart, court records show.

Before his trial, Akbar Bey's mother visited Stewart in jail and “elicited potentially incriminating statements” from him, which she later shared with an Oakland homicide detective, Peretti wrote in a legal document. Stewart's conviction was based primarily on the fact that several people saw the shooting and were able to identify him.

Stewart maintained his innocence for years. In a letter from prison, he wrote to a judge that he had been convicted by “a jury that had no connection with city life as I know it” and that one of his lawyers had been “intimidated from the beginning by the victim's family.”

His sentence was upheld on appeal, but changes in the way parole terms are calculated in the state prison system increased Stewart's chance of freedom. He was granted parole and will be released from prison in October 2022.

After his release, Stewart stopped trying to blame Bey or avoid any responsibility. In a September 2023 podcast interview, he spoke openly about his chaotic childhood, recalling learning how to cook, package and sell cocaine from his mother. His murder conviction, he said, was the result of a “morally wrong” and “hot-tempered decision” conditioned by his mentality that if he let someone steal from him, he would be subject to further abuse or disrespect.

“I had no right to do that, but I chose to do it, with the irrational assumption that if you take something away from me … my only option to do what I'm supposed to do is to hurt you,” Stewart said.

In the nearly 30 years between his arrest and his release, there have been dramatic changes in Oakland and in the family of Stewart's victim.

Yusuf Bey, the founder of Your Black Muslim Bakery and Akbar's father, died in 2004 while on trial for allegedly sexually abusing girls at the bakery he owned and ran. Three years later, his son Yusuf Bey IV ordered the killing of Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey and two other murders. Bey IV was later tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole. As it turns out, Stewart's attorney – Peretti – served as Bey IV's trial attorney after the previous attorney allegedly smuggled a hit list out of prison at Bey IV's behest, court records show.