Criminal known as ‘Slick Nick’ shot with own gun in Pakenham fracas

A hot-headed criminal known as “Slick Nick” was shot with his own gun when he arrived in a group to a Pakenham house.

The victim of a Pakenham shooting was a crime figure with a history of violence and gun offending.

Nicholas Chircop, 31, of Warragul, is believed to have been among a group of three men who turned up at a Ripplebrook Walk house in the early hours of February 16.

Police said an altercation broke out between a man at the property and the three arrivals.

Mr Chircop, known around the Latrobe Valley as “Slick Nick”, was wounded and taken in a serious condition to hospital where he was placed under police guard.

One police source said Chircop was blasted with his own gun.

No one else was hurt in the incident.

The two other visitors fled the scene before police arrived while the householder stayed at the scene.

The case is with detectives from the armed crime squad.

Nicholas Chircop was shot at Pakenham earlier this month. Picture: Facebook,

A County Court was previously told of Chircop’s “concerning criminal history” which included shooting a man in the leg who confronted his mate over a pair of runners.

Chircop was inside a Traralgon unit with another man when the confrontation fired up over the allegedly stolen shoes.

“Slick Nick”, armed with a 12-gauge shotgun, opened the sliding door about five metres from the man and a brief conversation followed.

Chircop then fired a bullet into the man’s leg.

“It seems to me that the moral culpability in a situation of firing a shotgun at a person from a few yards away has got to be regarded as high,” County Court Judge John Smallgood told Chircop in 2017.

Chircop was left in a serious condition under police guard after the shooting. Picture: Facebook

“It is a situation where knowing of your prior convictions and the like, you are experienced with firearms and there has to be a significant sentence for what you did.

“You are still only 23 years of age which is, putting it bluntly, about the only thing you have got going for you.”

Chircop was sentenced to a minimum of three years inside Barwon Prison for the Traralgon bloodshed.

It is understood “Slick Nick” had only been released from at least his second stint inside prison in recent months before this month’s shooting.

In 2016, Chircop crashed his mother’s Mitsubishi Magna into a tree before hiding three loaded guns, several rounds of ammunition and a balaclava in a bush nearby.

When local police moved to arrest Chircop at Morwell, he punched the detective in the nose and mouth in an assault that left the cop requiring surgery.

He had only been out of prison for three months prior to that assault.

He was sentenced in 2018 to six years in jail with a non-parole period of three years for that Morwell incident.