A shattered Melbourne shopkeeper says she will have to close her convenience store after it was destroyed by thugs after an extortion demand from one of the city’s organised crime syndicates.
The store on Sydney Road in Coburg was repeatedly rammed by a Nissan SUV at about 2am on Monday after two hooded and masked men walked in and filmed themselves leaving an ominous note on the counter last Tuesday telling the owners to contact “The Commission”.
But owner De Ashley, who has been running the shop for 25 years, said the number rang out and she shrugged the note off as “someone being stupid”, but now faces financial ruin.
“I just making a living, just getting by, I haven’t got the money,” she told 7News, saying operating costs were already too high, and that she cannot afford to pay criminals to stay in business.
“They just can’t go around intimidating people.
“I’ve been here for so long and they’ve just put me out of business. I just hope they realise what they’re doing to people’s lives.”
It is unclear if The Commission mentioned in the note refers to a drug syndicate of the same name, or whether the store was targeted by one of the Middle Eastern gangs which have been terrorising Melbourne with similar extortion threats in recent years, often paying African teenagers to carry out the violence.
One group, led by Iraqi Muslims, has been waging war on the city’s nightlife for ideological reasons, and is believed to be linked to former tobacco war kingpin Kazem Hamad, who orchestrated hundreds of firebombings and made $1 billion in two years from illegal cigarettes before his arrest in Iraq in January.
Crime is at all-time high in Victoria under Labor Premier Jacinta Allan, with police battling a recruitment crisis and a loss of public confidence due to their often violent and illegal enforcement of Melbourne’s Covid lockdowns, ongoing focus on far-left initiatives and accusations of two-tier political policing.
Header image: Left, De Ashley. Right, the two thugs (7News).
