By Cameron Houston and Chris Vedelago
An ex-Mongols bikie shot outside a funeral in Melbourne’s north at the weekend was previously targeted at a boxing night and is being pursued by five different groups.
A manhunt continues for the masked offenders who shot Suleiman “Sam” Abdulrahim, 30, after he left a funeral at Fawkner cemetery on Saturday afternoon.
A screenshot of Suleiman “Sam” Abdulrahim flipping the bird at his attackers from his hospital bed.
But an underworld source said Abdulrahim was fortunate to have avoided being shot at a boxing event last month, where he won the main fight against Victor Organov.
It is unknown if officers were aware of the planned hit, but a massive police presence outside the Plummer Street venue appears to have foiled the plot.
“There was absolutely a plan to get him either before or after [the fight], but there were hundreds of coppers there and they [those planning the attack] obviously didn’t go ahead with it,” one source with extensive underworld connections said.
“The problem he has is that he doesn’t know where it’s coming from. He’s pissed a lot of people off. There’s about five different groups, including the Mongols, who want him dead.”
Ex-Mongols bikie Suleiman “Sam” Abdulrahim was shot in Melbourne’s northern suburbs on Saturday.Credit: Paul Jeffers
Police were asked on Sunday if they had any comment about Abdulrahim’s enemies and whether officers knew about a potential attempt on his life at the boxing event in May.
They said the shooting was still an active investigation and they didn’t have any further information to release at present.
As police continued their investigation, a mother who was carjacked by one of the men who shot Abdulrahim has told Seven News she pleaded for the gunman to not harm her four-year-old son.
The woman, known as Tash, and her son Vinnie were forced out of their Ford Territory at gunpoint on Saturday after the two gunmen had crashed their getaway car outside a petrol station on Sydney Road.
“Don’t hurt him, please don’t hurt him,” Tash said she had pleaded. “All I can remember is a gun was being pointed at my face. Next minute, I’m pulling my kid out. He told me to get out. I told him, “I’ve got a kid, I’ve got a kid.
“Thinking back, if I had hesitated ... he’s just recently shot somebody, which I found out afterwards, like, he wouldn’t have hesitated.”
Tash said her son was having nightmares about the carjacking.
“The bad guy told Mummy and me to get out,” Vinnie told Seven News.
Tash said her carjacker should be ashamed to have put her son through such an ordeal.
“How could you do this to my kid? To put a four-year-old through that is unforgivable,” she said. “He’s going to have nightmares pretty much the rest of his life.
“He [Vinnie] does not want to stay at home with me now because he does not feel safe. [The gunman] just ruined our lives.”
Abdulrahim, a cruiser weight who fights under the name “The Punisher”, was taunted on social media on Sunday for seeking refuge at the Fawkner police station immediately after the shooting.
He sent a photograph of himself from a hospital bed while “flipping the bird” in an apparent act of defiance.
Images from a video posted to social media showing one of the masked offenders fleeing the crashed Mazda.
The image was captioned: “Allah is bigger than all these flops, they’ll get there (sic) day”.
He remains in a stable condition at the Royal Melbourne Hospital after undergoing at least two operations to remove several bullets that damaged his lungs, liver and a kidney.
A photograph circulated throughout the underworld shows four bullet holes across Abdulrahim’s chest, just missing his heart.
Police have made no arrests in connection to what they believe was a targeted attack against him.
Dashcam footage shows the moment the Mazda CX-4 driven by the assailants drove into oncoming traffic in Box Forest Road shortly before noon on Saturday, overtaking the vehicle carrying Abdulrahim and peppering it with bullets before speeding off.
The offenders then crashed the Mazda into a fire hydrant and traffic light pole near the intersection with Sydney Road.
They ditched the damaged Mazda and carjacked the Ford Territory from Tash at the nearby Ampol petrol station and sped off, while Abdulrahim was driven to Fawkner police station.
“Firearms were produced in the carjacking but … the mother and her son were not injured, but obviously [it was] a terrifying experience,” Acting Superintendent Boris Buick said.
The Ford Territory was recovered at 10pm on Saturday in Union Street, Epping, about 13 kilometres north-west of where it was originally stolen.
Since leaving the Mongols outlaw motorcycle gang earlier this year alongside other high-profile members Toby Mitchell and Mark Balsillie, Abdulrahim has been involved in various altercations with members of rival gangs.
Sources have said he was assaulted in recent months in Docklands, at a Melbourne cinema and at a Kensington boxing event.
In 2019, the Supreme Court was told Abdulrahim had been the intended target of two shootings and another firearm incident.
But on Saturday police said they had no idea who was behind the latest shooting.
Sam ‘The Punisher’ Abdulrahim in a photo from his Instagram page.Credit: Instagram
Video captured at the petrol station opposite Fawkner cemetery shows one of the offenders, dressed in black and wearing a yellow mask, running from the crashed getaway car.
A professional kickboxer, Abdulrahim made headlines in 2015 when he was involved in a wild brawl on the third level of the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court building with another kickboxer, Omar Bchinnati.
Five months after the brawl, Abdulrahim was driving a high-powered Ferrari 360 Spider almost 50 kilometres over the speed limit on the wrong side of the road when he ploughed into a car, killing an 88-year-old great-grandmother.
There is no suggestion anyone associated with those earlier incidents involving Abdulrahim had anything to do with Saturday’s shooting.
Abdulrahim was subsequently sentenced to three years and three months in jail, with a non-parole period of two years. He had a long history of driving offences, including speeding and driving while unlicensed.
With Ashleigh McMillan and Roy Ward
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