Double Rock Projects Murder Victim Remembered as Loving Father, Inspirational Student

Courtesy Dion Wilson

Michael Bailey

​It was a sad day at Southern University Monday as news rippled across campus that a man who, by any measure, should have been on the school's brochures, was instead dead in San Francisco.

SF Weekly has written a bit on Michael Bailey, the 26-year-old electrical engineering student visiting from Baton Rouge, La. who was murdered in the early morning hours on Sunday; police claim a woman Bailey and his friends met at a SoMa nightclub conspired to get the men to drop her off at the Double Rock projects in Hunters Point, where robbers laid in wait for the car. One of these men shot Bailey dead. 

All this was a horrific shock for the collegiate community back in Baton Rouge. Dion Wilson, Bailey's friend and lab partner in the engineering department, remembered his pal as a married, loving, father of three (two twins), who often toted his young sons into the lab.

"He was the best," recalled Wilson. "Anything you needed Michael to do, he would do. Besides being married and having three small kids at home, he was like a regular college student -- he would get things done."

Courtesy Dion Wilson

Friends and colleagues decorated a wall in Bailey's memory in the engineering building at Southern University

​In addition to raising a family and going to school full-time, Bailey also worked a full-time job at the Baton Rouge airport with Delta, according to Wilson.

"He used to bring his sons to our senior design meetings," remembered the lab mate. "To see how he cared for his kids, how he loved them, set an example for us all out here -- young black men trying to get an education. Seeing Mike support a family to the fullest while pursuing a very difficult major in electrical engineering really made a statement. He really was a role model."

Wilson described his friend as "book smart" and a "man with good sense" -- but "his background was definitely not from the street." While Wilson has visited San Francisco several times, he believes Bailey was not much of a traveler, and may not have known one San Francisco neighborhood from another.

"If I knew Mike was going to San Francisco, I would have told him where to stay away from. I know Hunters Point, the Double Rock Projects, is not where you want to be at," Wilson said.

According to his lab partner, Bailey was a man without enemies. "Nobody had a problem with Mike Bailey. I don't know anybody who had a problem with Mike Bailey."