Greenacre shooting victim Khaled Kahwaj refused to name his killer

AS he lay gasping his final breaths, police officers asked murder victim Khaled Kahwaji to name his killers. But he held his silence to the end.

Greenacre shooting

AS he lay gasping his final breaths, police officers asked murder victim Khaled Kahwaji to name his killers.

But Kahwaji, once a suspect in another murder, held his silence to the end.

Witnesses yesterday described the 29-year-old's final moments after he was shot in Wilbur St, Greenacre, in Sydney's southwest, on Friday as it emerged he had been questioned by police just a few hours earlier. Witnesses who came to Kahwaji's aid as he died said he was still breathing when they reached him, despite being shot five times.

Two officers took control of the scene, including one who asked him to name his killer.

"We were trying to talk to him and just saying 'can you hear us'," a neighbour, who asked to remain anonymous, said. "The first thing police asked him was 'Do you know who did this?'."

Kahwaji was already known to police. In August 2010, he was charged over the shooting death of drug dealer Saba Kairouz, 26, who was killed during a touch football game at Roberts Park, Greenacre.

Kahwaji spent 10 months on remand at Silverwater and Parklea prisons before the case collapsed after witnesses refused to come forward.

Police revealed Kahwaji, from Rhodes in Sydney's west, had been seen on Wilbur St 24 hours before he died after officers were called over a report that a man had been seen armed with a gun. He was then stopped and spoken to by police officers in Petersham about 12.30pm on Friday.

Heavily armed tactical police and dog squad officers remained in position on Wilbur St yesterday as five search warrants were executed in the area.

This included raids on two Wilbur St homes within metres of the shootings - one was a Department of Housing address registered to Monsour Hawa. No items were seized and no arrests were made.

Tactical officers used a loudspeaker to demand the Hawa home residents come out of the property.

"They were just on the loudspeaker going 'can the occupants of number 18 please come outside with your hands behind your heads, there is heavily armed police surrounding your house'," a neighbour said.

Three other search warrants were executed in the surrounding area, but no items were seized and no arrests made.

Detective Inspector Russell Oxford, of the Homicide Squad, said links to previous crimes and gangland activity in southwestern Sydney would be canvassed in the investigation.