Sergeant-at-arms Joshua Battah guilty of ordering drive-by shooting
REVEALED: why plans for the Lone Wolf outlaw motorcycle gang’s first Central Coast chapter ended in a hail of bullets.
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THE Lone Wolf outlaw motorcycle gang’s plans to start its first ever chapter on the Central Coast went down in a hail of bullets.
But the drive-by shooting of a house at Toowoon Bay — which left it riddled with six bullets — was not the result of a simmering war between the Lone Wolf gang and its much larger rival, the Rebels, a court has heard.
For the first time the Express Advocate can reveal the blatant shooting of a house on Toowoon Bay Rd shortly before 7.30pm on August 27, 2014, was the result of the Lone Wolf’s national sergeant-at-arms Joshua Paul Battah loosing faith in a recently patched member who he believed had “stitched me up a beauty” with the cops.
The 38-year-old national sergeant-at-arms was today found guilty in Gosford District Court of being an accessory before the fact of the drive-by shooting while a back up charge of knowingly direct the activities of a criminal group was “not required”.
The court heard a low-level criminal on the Coast became a nominee member of the Lone Wolf gang in January 2014 before going to police and offering to become an informant.
The man was made a fully patched member in June of that year at a time when tensions between the two gangs were on a knife edge.
The man, who ran a gym at Tumbi Umbi, and another locally-based Lone Wolf member were tasked by Battah with finding a suitable clubhouse and becoming the founding members of a new Central Coast chapter.
The court heard a brawl had broken out between the two gangs at Burwood a few months earlier in April after the Rebels “set up a club house there”.
The court heard there were three known Rebels chapters on the Coast, being Woy Woy, Gosford and Morisset as well as the presence of Comanchero.
Three days before the Toowoon Bay drive-by shooting, three bikies were stabbed when members of the Lone Wolf and Rebels clashed at Tweed Heads.
In the morning before the Toowoon Bay shooting Battah sent a text to the recently patched member saying “we’re at war with the Rebels bro” and asked him to come to Sydney to pick up some “tools”, which the court heard was code for guns.
However the informant told police who made a “risk management decision” for him not to go to Sydney and instead made up a cover story as to why he couldn’t.
Meanwhile, fearing an all out “turf war” between the rival gangs, the court heard other senior police — unaware of the informant’s existence — organised a meeting with Battah to urge him to use his influence to quell simmering tensions between the two gangs.
The court heard a detective told Battah at the Blue Cattle Dog Hotel in Sydney’s south west “you don’t need the heat and the media will be all over it”.
Judge Michael Bozic said after the meeting a series of intercepted text messages and phone calls showed Battah becoming increasingly frustrated and angry at the recently patched member who he believed had “double crossed or set him up” with the police.
Judge Bozic said the defence case had been the police informant could have been a target by the Rebels, which would explain why his house was shot up.
But Judge Bozic said the only rational “inference of guilt” was that the shooting was ordered by Battah who had threatened the informant in a series of messages in the lead up to the shooting.
Battah is expected to be sentenced early next year after earlier pleading guilty to 14 firearm and drug offences.