From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. This is the morning edition. I'm Tammy Mills, filling in for Samantha Salinger. Morris. It's Tuesday, April 27th. Shootings between a warring criminal underworld is not a particularly new thing for cities such as Sydney. This type of violence exploded almost two decades ago with the advent of the gang brothers for life, whose method of choice claimed the lives of multiple gang members, including some of their own, and
seriously injured innocent people in the crossfire. But such public violence did slow down once major gang figures had either been killed or placed behind bars. That is until recently when, as crime reporter Perry Duffin writes, once again, there's been a spate of gangland hits killing innocent people or minor criminals by an honorless underworld. Perry, thanks for coming on.
Thanks, Tammy.
First, let's talk about the most recent shootings on Sunday. What happened?
So on Sunday, there was a Toyota Hilux driving through a very busy road in Parramatta when another car pulled up alongside him and a bunch of shots were fired through the window. Um, the front seat passenger was hit in the head and the driver, a solicitor, was hit as well.
Shaping up to be a gangland hit, but this is a departure away from a textbook gangland hit that usually happens in the middle of the night, far away from innocent civilians. That was not the case here.
Right now, as we talk, um, the solicitor is in a intensive care in hospital. He's expected to survive. Whereas the passenger, who has links to the Alameddine crime family is probably not going to survive. He was shot in the head.
And can you tell us, for listeners like myself who who don't live in Sydney, what's the suburb of Granville like?
Granville is a busy place. It's, um, one of the most popular places to go and get dinner in Sydney. It's got some great restaurants, some great food. There are a lot of people around on the weekend and on Sunday night, no exception. These were really busy road. It was like a main arterial road through the city just near Parramatta, which is of course, you know, almost like
another city centre now. Um, and this shooting took place in front of a whole bunch of people who were just, you know, in traffic.
Back in the day, whatever you had, your dramas, you know, keep it within, whatever. You're not out in public like this.
It's quite shocking. Like, this isn't America. We're supposed to be safe here in Australia.
It was extremely brazen, extremely dangerous and extremely violent. There were people on the side of the road, you know, nursing bullet shot wounds and bleeding. Um, there was broken glass everywhere. Um, dash cam footage captured, um, the ute after it had been shot at, doing a U-turn, running over the median strip. It was extremely dangerous, extremely chaotic.
And do you know whether the lawyer was the target of the shooting, or was he in the wrong place at the wrong time?
It does happen. He's not the first lawyer to be shot. But, um, police said today that they believe everyone in that car could have been a target. But there's no suggestion that the lawyer is in any way connected to the underworld. Beyond, of course, his work representing them.
Because he's a criminal lawyer, right?
He is. He is. And he's, you know, many of his clients are alamuddin's. So the fact that he was with them is not all that surprising. And as I said, he's not the first lawyer who's been shot. But there's certainly no suggestion that he was the main target. In fact, police believed that it may have been the two men in the back seat who were targets, including a very senior. Uh alameddine. Allegedly.
Can you tell me also who the Alameddine crime family are?
Well, the Alameddine crime family is a massive extended family and associates that basically forms up a amount of Sydney's underworld. They are one of the major drug supply gangs in Sydney. They're also responsible for a lot of the violence. They have roots as well that go back to the last major wave of gang warfare, which involved the brothers for life, uh,
and the Ramsays. The Alameddines have sort of carried on some of those old grudges and some of those old techniques that, um, really shocked Sydney in the 2020 tens when brothers for life was going to war with itself.
Okay. And in Sydney last week, a 23 year old plumber was also gunned down in the driveway outside his home. Can you tell us a bit about this incident?
Yeah. So John Versace was a tradie. He had just gotten home, um, in his work ute when a car sped up, pulled into his driveway, a gunman got out the back seat, ran up and cornered him, and basically unloaded a Glock pistol into him. Killed him. Um, he was, as far as we can tell, as far as police seem to know. Totally innocent. He had no connections that anyone's been able to find or to the underworld or anything like that. That might explain why he was shot.
That one has police really baffled because the people who carried out the shooting, whoever they are and why they did it, they were using professional methods. They burned the car. They burned the gun. These are the hallmarks of a professional hit. The mystery is, why did they target this seemingly innocent man who was just getting out of his his car? He's aged 23, and, you know, he died in his driveway while his family was screaming. They told
us he's an innocent man. He's a good boy. And they were just absolutely shocked.
And so the Versace murder joins this list of of seemingly innocent targets in Sydney, including a grandmother who was killed in a loungeroom in a drive by shooting, and a mother who was abducted in front of her children and later murdered. Were these cases of mistaken identity or family members of those involved in organized crime or like, what's going on here?
Well, we spoke to a criminologist, Vince Hurley, who worked in the police as a detective, worked with undercover gangs, and he basically told us that there are people on the periphery of organized crime, or perhaps just on the on the periphery of crime, who wind up being targets for these executions, for these drive by shootings. And it seems that, at least in the case of Kim Tran, a mother who was abducted, executed, and her body was found in a burning car, that appears to be what's happened.
It was described as a crime with an unheard of level of violence.
Kim Tran Originally from Vietnam, she moved to Australia for a better life.
Assaulting her in front of her sons, then kidnapping her at gunpoint. Her body was found in a burnt out car about an hour later.
So our police sources have told us that Kim Tran's husband was working as a meth chef for a Vietnamese crime gang, a drug gang, and they had believed that he'd stolen some of the product. And so the current working theory in that investigation is that it was sort of an act of revenge or an attempt to recover their money or to extort, uh, the husband of Kim Tran. She had no actual connections beyond that, as far as
we know. And as for Kim Duncan, 65 year old grandmother, she was in her home at Ambarvale and nine shots were fired through her home. One of them hit her in the leg and she died on the floor of her living room. She as well was not believed to be the target or involved in any kind of serious
organised crime. She's got a son. He rushed home and was at the scene, so there's no indication that Kim Duncan was the target that whoever shot these this house was after they had fired indiscriminately into the home and killed her. But it shows, along with the murder of Kim Tran, that the people who are carrying out public place shootings and gang violence in Sydney right now are
not particularly concerned with who they kill. They're willing to kill people, um, as Vince Hurley said, because there is no honor among thieves. This is ruthless, and it's a form of business for them, and sadly, it costs people's lives.
Perry. They're both shocking cases. How unusual is it to have seemingly innocent bystanders or family members targeted by criminals?
Well, so it is shocking. It's sadly not unheard of. So there was a large wave of violence that happened about two years ago, following a targeted execution of a cocaine kingpin, Alan Mouradian, uh, at Bondi. After that, there was a whole bunch of shootings that followed as the underworld attempted to, you know, vie for control over the cocaine market. And in that process, there were quite a few people who were innocent who were just shot dead. Um, there was a lawyer who was shot and injured. He
survived in his driveway. Again, no connection beyond his job to organize crime. There was, um, a man sitting in a car at Granville who was shot and killed in that same shooting. Two more innocent people, also in a car nearby, were hit with stray bullets. I think one was seriously injured, maybe even paralyzed. It's not unheard of that people would get killed who are loosely connected or
completely unconnected. Um, but as Vince Hurley told us, the gangs that order these hits are using kill squads to carry it out because it offers a degree of insulation. A degree of distance makes it harder to link back to who actually ordered these hits, but the necessary sort of impact of that is that the gangs themselves lose control of the gunmen. They don't really know the people who are actually pulling the trigger, who they're after. They
don't know why they're doing it necessarily. And as a result, you might just get random people getting shot or the wrong person getting hit with a stray bullet because it's just an absolute loss of control by the underworld itself.
Okay. So it's it could be. Does this mean we're talking about more inexperienced criminals who are being hired by these gangs, who are then botching the shootings, or is it that they simply care less so they'll open fire in public places, or they're indifferent to bystanders getting hit?
Yeah. That's right. It appears to be both. I mean, some of the people that they arrest and charge who are allegedly part of these kill squads are in their 20s. Some of them are very young. Others certainly have no real connection to anyone who they've actually shot and injured or killed. It seems to just be reckless. Young, perhaps inexperienced, but ruthless. And so we're seeing, um, you know, scary waves of violence right now that we really haven't seen
for a couple of years. And in broader terms, we haven't seen for a decade. There was a huge wave of violence in about 2013 amongst brothers for life and the hamsters as they started to, um, exact attacks on each other. Within the gang, there were chapters and factions started to shoot and kill each other. Yeah. And one of the police theories now is that that's happening in the Alameddine network. And so they don't know who's shot
the at these four men in, um, Granville. But they one of the theories is that it's alameddine, um, on alameddine violence. It's an internal war.
Okay. So it could be a sign of some kind of gangland war and an internal gangland war. As in internal war within the same gang playing out in Sydney at the moment.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are a lot of factions. It's a very, very big drug network. I was at a cafe in the Inner West not too long ago, and I saw a very large, very scary guy wearing Alameddine official merchandise, but it was for one faction of the Alameddine.
I didn't even realise there was official merchandise.
There is. I don't know where you buy it. It's not on sale at Rebel Sport, but you can get gang merchandise. Brothers for life also popularized that. Um, and yeah, I saw a guy sipping on a latte wearing a shirt that said ready for War, which is one of the alameddine major groups.
Wow. And just finally, Perry, what have police been saying about this latest round of violence and what are they going to do about it?
So the cops are actually going to start saturating places. Now. What they do is they tend to go out and find, uh, associates of people who've been shot or arrested, and they will talk to them and they will serve things like firearm prohibition orders, which are designed to make it harder for people to get guns. Um, you expect to see police knocking doors, talking to their associates, handing out more
of these sort of things and just warning people off it. Um, we expect to see police doing, uh, a lot of high profile sort of, um, you know, operations around Sydney talking to people, searches, um, trying to dissuade anyone from retaliatory violence. Um, over the last few years, it's been a little bit quieter in terms of gang shootings. After Alan Mouradian was killed and there was quite a few attacks, people getting shot on the street, I think it was
five people in five weeks died. Um, there was task Force Magnus established huge high visibility police operation designed to just stamp out the violence and stop the cycle. And that seemed quite successful. It had quite a few, um, detectives out there all across Sydney, and it's it seems to be the cycle of how this works. There are increasing amounts of violence, an increased police response, and then
it quiets down. And it the concern now is that we're seeing an uptick and we're going to see another cycle of violence. We're going to see more bodies on the streets.
Yeah. And it's affecting, as we've just been talking about, not just criminal gangs who are of course, obviously also have family and wives and husbands and children, but um, innocent people as well, which is a real worry.
Yeah, yeah. The, you know, the Hollywood idea that, you know, the mob never hits the family. That's just Hollywood. They will shoot anyone that they can get near. As criminologist Vince Hurley told us, sometimes shooting someone who's only tangentially connected or barely connected to organized crime is the point. It's about showing that they are willing to be ruthless.
They will go after someone who doesn't even know they're in danger, and often these people don't really think about protecting themselves and that is what makes them a target, sadly.
Well, thank you so much for your time, Perry.
Thanks so much, Tammy.
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by me with technical assistance from Josh towers. Tom McKendrick is our head of audio. To listen to our episodes as soon as they drop, follow the Morning Edition on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And to support our journalism, subscribe to us by visiting The Age or smh.com.au. Subscribe and sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter to receive a comprehensive summary of the day's most important news,
analysis and insights in your inbox every day. Links are in the show. Notes. I'm Tammy Mills, this is the morning edition. Thanks for listening.