Queanbeyan servo killer’s mum’s house ‘sprayed with bullets’ months after alleged prison stabbing

A woman’s house was sprayed with bullets in a targeted drive-by shooting months after her son allegedly stabbed a high profile inmate inside Goulburn’s Supermax jail, a court has heard.

Victim Zeeshan Akbar, who was stabbed to death in an ISIS-inspired attack on a Queanbeyan service station by prisoner DM.

A woman’s house was sprayed with bullets in a “targeted” drive-by shooting five months after her son allegedly stabbed a high profile inmate inside Goulburn’s Supermax jail, a court has heard.

The son, who is currently serving 27 years behind bars for the bloody ISIS-inspired killing of a service station worker at Queanbeyan and can only be referred to as DM by court order, is alleged to have stabbed the older prisoner in the head and neck inside a prison exercise yard in January 2022.

Police have told the NSW District Court they will allege the shooting, which took place at a property near Bathurst, was carried out by an associate of the stabbed prisoner, who has links to organised crime, in an act of retaliation for the jail attack.

The court heard eight bullets were fired into the front door of the house while the woman and her two young children were home. No one was injured.

A man was later arrested over the incident and is due to stand trial next year charged with discharging a firearm with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, firing a firearm with disregard for safety and doing an act with the intention of perverting the course of justice.

DM and his alleged fellow-inmate victim were both being housed in Goulburn Supermax when the alleged stabbing occurred.

Details of the incident were revealed in court on Friday as Crown prosecutors sought a complete suppression of the upcoming prison stabbing trial, including CCTV footage, out of fear for the safety of both inmates and their families.

They also expressed concerns media coverage of the case could “adversely affect the security, discipline, or good order of a correctional centre”.

Judge Leonie Flannery SC rejected a complete suppression of the case, but did agree to prohibit the alleged victim from being publicly identified until she delivered her verdict in the judge-alone trial.

In an affidavit tendered to the court on the application, Correctives Services senior executive Leon Taylor said DM told his sister in a phone call in February this year that he was going to have his lawyers send her his legal files.

The files contained CCTV footage of both the stabbing and an incident from December 2020 in which DM held a prison guard hostage for six hours and tortured him during a siege at Kempsey jail, the court heard.

Mr Taylor told the court he believed the public release of the stabbing footage “would place [DM] at an increased risk of serious harm or death” from the complainant’s associates.

Mr Taylor described the complainant’s criminal connections as people “known for violence, kidnappings, murders [and] shootings” and said there was a likelihood they would engage in “violent retaliation” if they felt their associate had been “humiliated or embarrassed”.

“There is a real risk that if the CCTV footage was to be released, DM and his family would be placed at an increased risk of harm, and it may adversely affect the security, discipline, or good order of a correctional centre,” he wrote in the affidavit.

Mr Taylor also expressed concern for the safety of the complainant, saying he could be the subject of retaliation attacks himself if he was seen to be “acting in the capacity of a Crown witness”.

“Informers, or people perceived to be informers, are often the subject of violence from other inmates because of their actual or perceived help to the authorities that detect, arrest and imprison criminals,” Mr Taylor said.

Judge Flannery said the suppression order would end once a verdict was delivered, but believed one was necessary while the trial was being held.

Meanwhile, court documents have revealed prison guards escorting DM to and from court have been advised to take “extreme caution” when interacting with him.

When being transferred, there is to be a minimum of three guards with him at all times, and he is to have his ankles and hands cuffed for the duration of the proceedings.

The court heard DM is classified as an extreme high security inmate and has a long list of prisoners with whom he cannot associate.

He also has repeated entries on his inmate profile for self harm, and at one stage threatened to bite off his tongue or a piece of his arm if he wasn’t removed from a specific unit within the correctional centre.

DM’s trial will be heard later this year.

Originally published as Queanbeyan servo killer’s mum’s house ‘sprayed with bullets’ months after alleged prison stabbing