Sydney has been rocked by a night of Middle Eastern gang violence, with a former boxing champion shot, two police officers injured, and a suspected “kill car” intercepted.
Boxer turned convicted kidnapper Hamzah Khalid, 26, who police say is linked to organised crime, is fighting for life after he and his driver Nasem Shamit were peppered with bullets while inside a white Mercedes sedan in Chester Hill at about 11.30pm on Wednesday.
Khalid turned up at Auburn Hospital with severe gunshot wounds, and Shamit then allegedly assaulted a 58-year-old NSW Police chief inspector who went inside seeking information on Khalid’s attackers.
The officer was allegedly punched multiple times in the head, and Shamit was arrested by hospital security guards and charged with assaulting a police officer.
Khalid, who fought under the name The Raging Bull before being jailed over two violent gangland abductions in 2021, was transferred to another hospital and remains in a critical condition.
In a separate incident in nearby Punchbowl earlier in the evening, a 39-year-old officer was allegedly rammed with a stolen car and pinned between two other vehicles, firing at the Toyota CHR before it fled the scene.
A short time later a 32-year-old man was found with a gunshot wound in Ryde, and was taken to hospital in a stable condition where he remains under police guard and is expected to be charged later today.
In another separate incident at 2.40am police swooped on a suspected kill car – a vehicle prepared for use by underworld hitmen – after reports of a home invasion where four men allegedly broke into a house in Whalan armed with a firearm and a hammer.
Police then tracked down two men, both 22, to Marsden Park and allegedly seized a pump-action shotgun, ammunition, jerry cans of fuel, sledgehammers, baseball bats, duct tape, cable ties and pillowcases.
The man were charged with multiple firearms offences and refused bail.
Header image: Left, right, Hamzah Khalid (supplied).
