Live fast, die young: Sydney’s Bad Blood Club
IT’S Sydney’s Bad Blood Club where nobody gets to make it to middle age. An ever-growing list of ‘live fast, die young’ deaths linked to Sydney’s shadowy underworld is emerging where its victims hardly make it to 40.
NSW
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IT’S Sydney’s Bad Blood Club where nobody gets to make it to middle age.
The entertainment world has its infamous ‘27 Club’ where a host of musicians, artists, and actors passed away at that tragically young age, often as a result of drug or alcohol abuse.
Similarly, a bloodier and ever-growing list of ‘live fast, die young’ deaths linked to Sydney’s shadowy underworld is emerging where its victims hardly make it to 40.
Last week, former president of the Comanchero motorcycle gang Mick Hawi was executed in a hail of bullets outside a Rockdale gym in a ‘hallmark’ contract killing sources said would have cost between $300,000 and $500,000.
Married to his high school sweetheart and with two children, Hawi, had cheated death at 28 when the Audi he was travelling in was shot at after a lunch meeting with members of the Finks bikie gang at Leichhardt’s Grappa Ristorante.
As the powerful national boss of the Comanchero gang for almost seven years, he had cleverly kept a low public profile — until the notorious Sydney Airport brawl in 2009 in which Hells Angel Anthony Zervas, 29, was stabbed and bludgeoned to death.
BIKIE GANGS IN SYDNEY: THE FULL INVESTIGATION
Chapter 1: The cops who crushed the bikies
Chapter 2: Inside the real-life police fight club
Chapter 3: The day bikies went too far
Chapter 4: Warlords of the underworld
Hawi won his appeal over his subsequent jailing, his murder conviction overturned. But the writing was on the wall for both the city’s outlaw bikie gangs and one of their heavyweight figures.
Public outrage at the brazen violence led police to set up Strike Force Raptor, which has aggressively targeted bikie gangs in their homes, clubhouses, brothels and on their beloved bikes.
And for Beirut-born bikie prince Hawi, a violent end was to await him after a routine morning workout in a Sydney gym, aged just 37.
MAHMOUD ‘MICK’ HAWI
2018, February 15: Detectives continue to delve into the slain 37-year-old bikie’s remaining links to the Comanchero to try to catch the balaclava-clad hitman who assassinated him after a morning gym session at Rockdale last week.
The former president of Comanchero motorcycle gang was jailed in 2012 for his role in the infamous Sydney Airport brawl in which his gang stabbed and bludgeoned rival bikie associate Anthony Zervas to death in the domestic departures hall.
KEMEL BARAKAT
2017, March 10: The 29-year-old, linked to the Hells Angels, was shot multiple times at close range in the middle of the night in his Mortlake unit, in Sydney’s inner-west. Barakat was reportedly a suspect in the October 2016 shooting of Hamad Assaad.
RICKY CIANO
2017, February 15: The body of the 35-year-old former Rebels bikie gang member found in the back of a luxury car in the NSW Central Tablelands region, a day after he was reported missing.
PASQUALE BARBARO
2016, November 14: Barbaro, 35, was shot dead outside an Earlwood home in southwest Sydney. Barbaro’s grandfather and cousin were both killed in gangland hits and there were unconfirmed rumours he was an informant.
HAMAD ASSAAD
2016, October 25: Assaad shot dead in broad daylight by at least two gunmen in the driveway of his Georges Hall home. Assaad, 29, was a key suspect in the murder of underworld figure Walid Ahmad.
MEHMET YILMAZ
2016, September 9: Yilmaz was shot at point-blank range while getting into his car where his fiancee was seated in a St Marys street. Police said 29-year-old Yilmaz was not formally aligned with any gangs but was believed to be closely linked with one.
ADRIAN BUXTON
2016, May 19: Buxton, 31, was gunned down as he put the bins out at his Colyton home at night. Buxton’s wife and two children were inside at the time. Buxton had links to the Nomads bikie gang and his death was believed to be linked to two other recent shootings.
WALID AHMAD
2016, April 29: Gangland kingpin and convicted killer Ahmad, 40, killed in a spray of bullets on the rooftop car park of Bankstown Central shopping centre. Ahmad’s murder was believed to be in retaliation for the fatal shooting of Safwan Charbaji outside a Condell Park panel beater several weeks earlier.
SAFWAN CHARBAJI
2016, April 9: Charbaji, 32, fatally wounded and another man seriously injured after a gunfight outside a Condell Park smash repair business linked to Ahmad. An outstanding debt dispute was reportedly one of the possible motives being investigated for the fatal shooting.
MICHAEL DAVEY
2016, March 30: Davey was shot dead in the driveway in a drive-by shooting in Kingswood. Believed to be a member of the Rebels motorcycle gang, Davey, 30, had escaped injury during a shooting at a shopping centre the previous year.
MARK EASTER
DARREN WALLACE, TEVITA DAUNIBAU
2015, June 26: Easter’s body was found dumped on the side of the Pacific Highway in Cowan. The 37-year-old Rebels bikie gang member was shot several times in the head in what police described as an execution.
2015, December 9: Rebels bikie Tevita Daunibau, 31, executed the gang’s sergeant-at-arms Darren Wallace, 32, in front of stunned witnesses at a service station before fleeing to a nearby Picton creek and shooting himself dead. A row over “patching out” or quitting the Rebels motorcycle gang was believed to have been the motive for the murder-suicide.