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A witness has given a dramatic account of the daylight gang execution of crime boss Ghassan Amoun as he left a laser hair removal salon.
Joe Marco, 44, said he was in his garage when he heard a gunshot around 12.45pm on Thursday, in Sydney‘s west.
Mr Marco came out onto Rawson Road, at South Wentworthville, about 20 minutes later to ‘go for a run’ and saw three police officers pulling a man with ‘blood all over his arm’ from a car and yelling ‘he’s been shot, he’s been shot’.
He then saw officers performing CPR on a man lying motionless on the road.
‘They were pumping his chest, pumping his chest … he wasn’t moving,’ Mr Marco said.
‘I think there was a female in the passenger side of the car yelling something about a nav man.’
Police stand around the slaim body of crime boss Ghassan Amoun who was shot dead in a daylight execution on Thursday
Amoun, who is the younger brother of Brothers for Life founder Bassam Hamzy, was getting into his luxury BMW when he was shot twice in the head
Amoun, right in blue jacket, pictured in 2020 outside the Downing Centre Court where he had been supporting a relative
In the drama of the moment, Mr Marco said he could have mistaken a female passenger for a woman police officer.
The body of Amoun, 35, who is the younger brother of notorious Brothers for Life founder Bassam Hamzy, lay in the street for several hours covered with a blue police sheet, his hand poking from beneath the sheet with a gold Rollex watch on the wrist.
Mr Marco said ‘it was a bit sad’ to see the aftermath of a man’s murder but ‘people who are that dangerous are better off dead’.
‘He’s gotten out of jail and someone has shot him.’
Amoun, 35, was jailed last year for breaching a Serious Crime Prevention Order after he was found with undeclared mobile phones and a laptop inside his vehicle.
He was released on Monday.
Mr Marco said he believed there was a connection between Amoun and a shooting in the World Gym at Prospect about three weeks ago.
‘The person who went and shot up the gym… I was meant to be there that day.
‘Gang members, they want society to fear for for their life.
‘I don’t want to get shot.’
The body of slain Ghassan Amoun, 35, (pictured) lies in the street body covered by a blue sheet as police and forensic officers swarm onto the crime scene
Joe Marco, 44, was in his garage when he heard a gunshot. He saw three police officers pulling a man with ‘blood all over his arm’ from a car and yelling ‘he’s been shot, he’s been shot’
Detectives returned to the crime scene on Friday morning and attended a house to collect CCTV footage from a security camera.
The house owners said they believed their cameras would have only captured their front yard but that police were keen to get any footage they could find of Amoun’s possible assailants in the street.
The Lady Laser salon, where Amoun had been visiting in the moments before his execuction, remained closed.
Staff who were working when the shooting occurred were ‘traumatised’, the owner said.
A young mother in the apartment block overlooking the scene of the execution said she ‘heard gunshots’ while caring for her baby, but didn’t go outside.
‘I got scared because I have kids,’ she said.
Neighbour George, who asked for his surname not to be published, said he was in his back yard tending to his tomato and cucumber plants when the shooting happened.
‘It is very sad. My kids want me to move,’ he said.
Amoun, a high-ranking organised crime lieutenant, was the known ‘next target’ in Sydney’s bloody gang war between the Hamzy and Alameddine families.
Ghassan Amoun (pictured) was gunned down in broad daylight on Thursday less than a year after police told him he was a marked man, and ‘next’ on the list to be executed
Executed Ghassan Amoun is the brother of imprisoned Brothers 4 Life gang leader, Bassam Hamzy (pictured)
Detectives issued a public alert for a grey 2017 Mini Cooper that was stolen from a Warrawee home on Sydney’s Upper North Shore on October 28 along with three other cars, feating they could be used in ongoing gang feuds.
The aggravated break-in was part of a wave of high-performance auto thefts in the area between October 25 and November 2, which were later used in underworld hits.
‘We have previously seized more than 40 luxury stolen vehicles used in crimes across Greater Sydney — including vehicles used in an alleged murder attempt at North Sydney earlier this year and a double murder at Guildford last month,’ Detective Superintendent Grant Taylor said at the time.
Police foiled an alleged gangland hit on Ibrahim Hamze in August last year when officers spotted a Mercedes – one of the four vehicles reported stolen.
Salim and Toufik Hamze weren’t so lucky in October when they were gunned down outside their home in Guildford.
The long-running feud between the waring crime clans has been going on for years, as Bassam Hamzy continues to call the shots from his Goulburn Supermax prison cell after being sentenced for murder.
Pictured: The taped off scene in South Wentworthville where police and paramedics rushed to the scene around 12.45pm on Thursday to find Ghassan Amoun fatally shot in the road
The Mini cooper (pictured on Una Street) was found burnt out and is believed to have been the getaway car
The modus operandi of the hitmen contracted to take out Hamzy associates is to sneak up on the target – often in a public place – and pepper them with bullets.
They then speed off in a stolen car with cloned number plates before dumping it in a nearby suburb and torching it.
A witness who saw the frightening scene play out on Thursday described the moment masked men set the Mini Cooper on fire in Una Street, Wentworthville.
‘There was a bang and everything started exploding,’ Ruth Simpson told Nine News.
‘Then there was just black smoke and all of this orange fire. Oh my god it was just like, ‘wow’!’
At about 3pm on Thursday, the 35-year-old’s body was still lying in the street covered by a blue sheet, as police and forensics officers wearing gloves and and masks and carrying clipboards swarmed over the crime scene.
Acting Superintendent Glen Fitzgerald said the shooting was ‘quite obviously targeted’ and detectives were investigating ‘obvious connections to criminal networks’.
Streets and a highway (pictured) were sealed off with crime tape as police combed the scene for clues and forensic officers wearing masks and gloves gathered evidence
‘There appears to be a driver and a shooter that got out of one of the vehicles,’ acting Superintendent Fitzgerald said.
Amoun had been approached as he got into his car in a ‘very brutal attack’.
‘Any type of incident like this is a worry,’ acting Superintendent Fitzgerald said. ‘This is what happens when firearms are in the possession of the wrong people.’
Police and paramedics rushed to the shooting on Rawson Road in South Wentworthville about 12.45pm on Thursday, but Amoun died at the scene.
Amoun is the third Hamzy relative to be assassinated in less than two years after Bassam’s brother Mejid Hamzy in 2020 and cousin Bilal Hamze in 2021.
In June last year Bilal Hamze, 34, was shot dead after a date with a woman at trendy Japanese restaurant Kid Kyoto on Bridge Street, near Circular Quay.
Despite knowing he was a marked man, Amoun brushed off police fears he was ‘at risk’ and attended his executed cousin’s Sydney funeral with grieving family members.
Amoun, who was executed on Thursday, was among mourners at his cousin’s funeral last year (above) despite being warned he was the family’s next target on the gangland war list
Another Hamzy brother Ibrahem (kneeling in grey hoodie) is pictured last year at his cousin Bilal Hamze’s gravesite after Hamze was executed
Bassam Hamzy’s older brother Mejid Hamzy, 44, was gunned down outside his home in Condell Park by two black-clad men on the morning of October 19, 2020.
Last year a court heard that prior to Amoun attending Bilal Hamze’s funeral, a judge had concerns for his safety associating with other mourners.
Amoun had secretly fought police at the NSW Supreme Court court for the very right to be at the funeral.
Lawyers for Amoun had applied for the court to relax serious crime prevention orders which banned them from associating with two cousins for the duration of the funeral.
Police intelligence obtained earlier that week ‘suggests that (Ghassan Amoun) is said to be the next person to be targeted’, Justice David Davies told the court 24 hours before the June 2021 funeral.
Firefighters race to put out the Mini Cooper believed to have been set alight by the killers
THE TIMELINE OF SYDNEY’S BLOODY GANGLAND WAR
MAY 2007 – Prison officers find notes in Bassam Hamzy’s Lithgow jail cell referring to the Brothers 4 Life bikie gang for the first time
OCTOBER 2012 – Tensions between the Bankstown and Blacktown chapters of B4L blow up with the shooting of Yehye Amood, 27 and Bassim Hijazi. Amhoom is killed but Hijazi survives and flees to Lebanon
MARCH 9, 2013 – Bassam Hamzy’s aunt Maha Hamze is shot eight times in the legs, but survives, in a reprisal attack for her son Ashkan Rajabi demanding money from another gang member’s mother
JULY 2013 – Ashkan Rajabi and Bilal Hamze survive an assassination attempt in Wenworthville
OCTOBER 29, 2013 – Mahmoud Hamzy – cousin of Bassim Hamzy – shot dead in Revesby Heights. Five B4L members were later charged with the murder
NOVEMBER 3, 2013 – B4L member Michael Odisho shot but survives
NOVEMBER 4, 2013 – Masood Zakaria – an Alameddine associate – survives shooting attempt but his 13 year old sister is injured by shotgun pellets
DECEMBER 16, 2013 – Standover man Joe Antoun shot dead in Strathfield
JANUARY 1, 2014 – Farhad Qaumi shot at as his yacht pulls into Rose Bay Marina in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs (pictured) after the NYE fireworks
DECEMBER 11, 2014 – Bassam Hamzy’s mother Lola Hamzy was shot through her front door in Auburn
APRIL 9, 2016 – Safwan Charbaji – a relative of Alameddine associates – shot dead outside a smash repair shop in Condell Park
APRIL 29. 2016 – Wally Ahmad – associate of the Hamzi family – shot dead in Bankstown
OCTOBER 25, 2016 – Hamad Assad executed in Georges Hall. Assad was suspected of killing Ahmad
MARCH 20, 2017 – Hell’s Angel bikie Kemel Barakat is shot dead at home in Mortdale
MARCH 28, 2017 – Emed Sleiman is shot dead in his car park in Auburn. He was suspected of killing Barakat
OCTOBER 4, 2020 – Shaylin Zreika – an associate of the Alameddines – is beaten with a metal bar in a street fight in Strathfield
OCTOBER 18, 2020 – Rafat Alameddine’s former home is shot up in a drive-by shooting
OCTOBER 19, 2020 – Mejid Hamzy is shot dead in Condell Park
JANUARY 30, 2021 – Mustafa Naaman is shot dead in Hurstville in a suspected mistaken identity attack on Ibrahem Hamze
JANUARY 30, 2021 – Mejed Derbas is shot dead in Smithfield
FEBRUARY 15, 2021 – Bilal Hamze’s mother Maha Hamze comes under gunfire again in another drive-by shooting at her home in Auburn
MARCH 12, 2021 – A home linked to the Alameddine family in Guildford is shot up
JUNE 17, 2021 – Bilal Hamze is shot dead outside Mr Wong’s restaurant in Sydney’s CBD
AUGUST 6, 2021 – Alameddine low-level associate Shady Kanj is shot in Chester Hill and found dead by police in Guildford
AUGUST 14, 2021 – Police foil alleged gangland hit on Ibrahim Hamze when they spot stolen Mercedes in North Sydney
OCTOBER 20, 2021 – Salim and Toufik Hamze are gunned down outside their home in Guildford
NOVEMBER 10, 2021 – Drive-by shooting at Guildford home of Alameddine associate. No-one is hurt
JANUARY 6, 2022 – Brother of Bassam Hamzy, Ghassan Amoun, is shot dead at 35 years of age in a brazen daylight execution as he sat in a BMW outside an apartment building in Western Sydney.
Police at the scene of the double murder of Salim and Toufik Hamze in Guildford
Source: Daily Mail
