Former bikie Yusuf Nazlioglu dies after Rhodes shooting as police probe ‘targeted’ attack
The widow of slain Lone Wolf bikie Yusuf Nazlioglu was seen “wailing” in the aftermath of his shooting, as police probe what they believe was a targeted attack.
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Former Lone Wolf bikie Yusuf Nazlioglu has died after being shot up to 10 times on Monday night in Sydney’s inner west.
Nazlioglu, who was found not guilty of shooting Comanchero boss Mick Hawi in 2018, passed away in Westmead Hospital early on Tuesday morning.
A gunman unloaded on him in the basement car park of an apartment building on Walker St, Rhodes about 6pm.
Police believe the fatal shooting incident in Rhodes last night was a targeted attack.
Nazlioglu was parking his car at the apartment block he lives in at Rhodes when he was approached by an unknown male who presented a gun.
The ex-bikie was then shot multiple times in the torso and the head before somebody dialled emergency services.
Police said the perpetrator then scurried away in a small silver coloured hatchback, which was later located around the corner of the property up in flames.
“The attack in our view was a targeted attack. There are various lines of enquiry underway,” Superintendent Martin Hayston told reporters on Tuesday morning.
The slain bikie’s distressed wife Jade Nazlioglu was seen talking to friends today outside the towerblock where she lives, wearing a black hoodie with tears streaming down her face.
“Of course I’m not all right, what do you think?” she said.
One resident of the tower block above the car park where Nazlioglu was gunned down told how his wife was seen crying in the foyer of the smart residential block as emergency services tried to resuscitate her husband.
“We saw lots of police and there was a lot of commotion last night outside the block, the cops told us not to leave our house and the bikie’s wife was crying in the foyer,” one neighbour said.
“She was wailing, she was really upset. She was saying ‘Why did they have to kill him, he’s a new man, he hasn’t done anything wrong, he’s not what he used to be’”, she said.
Other residents today told how blasé they were about the shooting, with one McDonald’s worker beside the block Alexa Felix, 19, saying, “It was a fluke incident, this is it normally a safe area. It was shocking to hear about it but I put it down as a one-off.
“We’ve all been saying in the restaurant how these things happen in cities, you get shootings all the time.”
Blood marked the spot four stories beneath the underground car park beside a fire escape door where Nazlioglu was gunned down yesterday when he attempted to make good his escape.
Police tape cordons off the car parking spot where he had left his car before trying to escape his shooters last night.
It was earlier revealed Nazlioglu once boasted of how he lived fearlessly despite knowing “I’m gunna get knocked one day”.
A burnt out getaway car was found in nearby Leeds St shortly after the shooting.
Police said late on Monday night the shooting was targeted.
Officers urged any witnesses to the shooting or anyone who had been in the area who has dashcam footage to come forward.
It is the latest in a shocking run of gangland violence, which has seen 13 executions in the past two years and numerous attempted hits.
It comes as the first shooting since Rami Iskander, a member of the Ahmad family, was shot dead in Belmore on May 14.
Iskander’s uncle, underworld heavyweight Mahmoud “Brownie” Ahmad, was shot dead the month before that.
Paramedics worked on Nazlioglu for more than an hour before wheeling him, heavily bloodied and bandaged, out the doors of the unit block beside Rhodes Central shopping centre and into an ambulance.
Sources said he was shot up to 10 times.
Nazlioglu was understood to be close to the Comanchero bikie club, where he had no known rivals.
One underworld source did say he had numerous enemies outside the club however.
Nazlioglu’s shooting is the latest in a shocking run of underworld attacks in the past two years.
However, the shooting is not believed to be related in any way to the current feud between the Hamzy and Alameddine clans.
Nazlioglu was charged by police with murder in 2018 when Hawi, a former boss of the Comanchero bikie gang, was fatally shot in broad daylight out the front of a gym in Rockdale.
A jury ultimatelyfound Nazlioglu was not guilty of Hawi’s murder.
He had also been charged with an unrelated gun offence shortly after he was arrested over Hawi’s death.
Nazlioglu pleaded guilty to possessing a gun in contravention of a firearm prohibition and was sentenced to three years behind bars. He walked out of prison on parole in September 2021.
He had first become eligible for parole on his 40th birthday.
A court heard police had found a gun near his car space while he was renting an apartment for $1350 a week at Circular Quay’s The Toaster building while unemployed.
As part of his parole conditions, Nazlioglu was forbidden from taking illegal drugs and he was also forbidden from talking to any bikies without prior approval from authorities.
Recordings of covert listening devices, tendered to court during a sentence hearing on Nazlioglu’s gun offence, revealed his carefree attitude to threats on his life.
“I used to hear people outside were going to knock me, yeah?” Nazlioglu was recorded saying inside Silverwater Jail in 2020.
“I used to still leave my house, brother, knowing that one day someone’s going to sneak up on me and put one in my head.
“But I still f**king went to the same hairdresser, went to the same f**king restaurants yeah. I still showed my face in front yard and hung out with boys at their porches at their houses, yeah, knowing I’m gunna get knocked one day.”
He added: “Brother we still went to the same mosque brother where all our enemies know we pray at that mosque, yeah. They could wait for us to walk out brother, did we sh*t ourselves? Were we scared? No.”
Nazlioglu was raised in Sydney by his parents who were from Turkey.
He had a difficult time at school before falling into drug use at only 16, a court once heard.
He served seven years jail between 2002 and 2009 over a charge of maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent to do grievous bodily harm.
That charge related to a vicious and repeated stabbing attack against a man he did not know who was simply walking home with his wife and young child, a court heard.
Nazlioglu later said he was on cocaine when he committed that offence.
He joined the Lone Wolf bikie club when he was 29.
In 2014 he opened a kebab shop, but the following year the shop was burnt down by a rival bikie club.
Originally published as Former bikie Yusuf Nazlioglu dies after Rhodes shooting as police probe ‘targeted’ attack
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