‘Life for life’: Sydney mum describes moment hit man shot her teenage son in alleged revenge attack
The mother of a teenage boy shot dead in his bed in an alleged revenge attack has told a court of the moment the hit man kicked in the door and changed her life forever.
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“Brother for brother, life for life” the mother of a Sydney teenager, executed in an alleged revenge attack, has described the horrible moment the assassin bashed his way into the family home.
The 15-year-old boy was shot once in the head as he lay in bed in Sydney’s west in April 2017.
NSW Police would later arrest the confessed hit man and a slew of others – including Abdul Abu-Mahmoud, who is now on trial after pleading not guilty to ordering the slaying.
He has instead pointed to the close relationship between the hit man and the “feudal” leader of the notorious Brothers For Life – Bassam Hamzy – without accusing the incarcerated gang leader.
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The shot boy’s mother, Rachael Wood, told the NSW Supreme Court she heard banging downstairs in the early hours of the morning in April 2017.
She opened her bedroom door and saw a tall, skinny man with his face covered standing at the top of her staircase.
“Get the f*** back in your room and shut the f***ing door,” the intruder yelled, pointing a gun at Ms Wood, the court heard.
The mother retreated to her room, with her husband and young children, and tried to find them shelter as she began dialling triple-0.
Then a gunshot rang out – her teenage son had just been fatally shot.
“I remained in the room and held my daughter down I heard (the gunman) run down the stairs,” Ms Wood said.
The mother looked out the top floor window and saw the assassin run down the street and disappear – she was still on the phone with emergency services and begged the dispatcher to listen to her description of the man.
“If I said it out loud the call would be recorded,” she said.
“I wanted to make sure they knew exactly what to look for.”
The mother ran into her son’s room and found him bleeding, she told the court she only left his side to get a towel for the bleeding.
Paramedics arrived at the Glenfield home within minutes, but it was too late.
Ms Wood would make the heart-wrenching decision to switch off her son’s life support at Westmead Hospital as police swarmed the crime scene that was her home.
They’d find the boy’s old bedroom door kicked in as well as an entry.
Detectives would quickly hear people had made threats against the boy.
“He was dead, he was a dog, he was going to die and his brother, Joshua Dillon, was going to die,” Abu-Mahmoud’s barrister Ertunc Ozen SC told the court, reading from the mother’s statements to police.
“Brother for brother, life for life.”
Police allege the life the hit man was sent to avenge was Abu-Mahmoud’s nephew – Adam Abu-Mahmoud.
Adam was 18 when Ms Wood’s older son, Joshua Dillon, fatally plunged a knife into his kidney in a wild street brawl in Panania in 2016.
Mr Dillon was acquitted of the murder late last year with the court accepting he had acted in self defence.
The court previously heard that, in the months leading up to his younger brother’s shooting, Mr Dillon was also being threatened in custody.
The court heard Mr Dillon was approached at Burwood Local Court in August 2016 by a man with “Adam” tattooed on his neck.
“I am going to kill you… no I am going to kill your whole family,” the man allegedly said to Mr Dillon.
“Remember this face c*** my name Abdul Abu-Mahmoud.”
The court heard an Arabic tattoo on Abu-Mahmoud’s arm translates as “an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth and blood for blood”.
Prosecutors told the court it was a sign he was trying to “remedy” his nephew’s death through retribution.
Mr Ozen said his client’s family had been deeply upset by Adam’s death, and didn’t dispute he confronted Mr Dillon – but disputed the alleged threats.
He also doesn’t dispute he was a trusted associate of Hamzy’s B4L gang but worked only as a messenger, and was not a full member.
“(The gang) was an organisation that was marked not just by its willingness to carry out acts of violence and to move significant amounts of drugs in our community but if importantly for this trial an organisation that demanded of its members loyalty and in return received loyalty from Mr Hamzy,” Mr Ozen said.
Mr Ozen said the hit man, who cannot be named, was a “soldier” of Hamzy in the gang.
But the evidence fails to prove, Mr Ozen said on Monday, that Abu-Mahmoud was the man who ordered the cold blooded execution.
The trial continues.