Merrylands West shooting victim identified as Joshua Macdonald

The intended target of a botched assassination was warned of threats to his safety in the days before an innocent man was shot dead outside his western Sydney home as pressure mounts on police over two mistaken identity murders this week.

NSW Premier Chris Minns is considering stronger powers for police as authorities grapple with the most significant escalation of gangland violence in several years following killings of two innocent men a day apart.

The fatal shootings of Marcio Tapia, 23, and Joshua Macdonald, 40, the latest in a series of mistaken identity attacks across Sydney in the past two years, have alarmed senior police, who are facing questions about the force’s ability to quell organised crime-related violence.

Asked on Thursday if police had lost control of gangland violence in Sydney, Minns said: “For the people who’ve been affected, who’ve been killed, the answer is yes.”

NSW Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said he would increase the number of high-visibility officers on Sydney’s streets in response to this week’s shootings.

Extra officers will be deployed to suburbs being targeted by police, including under Taskforce Falcon, a 150-strong operation established after the mistaken identity killing of innocent man John Versace outside his family home last May.

“We can suppress the type of violence we’re seeing,” Lanyon said on Thursday afternoon.

Police sources with knowledge of the investigation into Macdonald’s murder but not permitted to speak publicly told the Herald that the assailants who shot him dead in the doorway of the Merrylands West home had been targeting Moshtaba Hafizi, a man police allege has longstanding links to the notorious Alameddine crime family.

Police had formally warned Hafizi several times that his life was at risk, including in the days before Wednesday’s shooting, according to several sources. The 30-year-old, who owns the Bruce Street home but does not live there, was aware the property could be targeted.

Instead of shooting Hafizi, the assailants shot dead Macdonald after one opened fire from the rear passenger door of what is believed to be a stolen Audi just after 3pm on Wednesday. A car believed to be the Audi was found burnt out at Denham Court on Wednesday night. No arrests have been made over Tapia or Macdonald’s killings.

Macdonald arrived at the Merrylands West home of a business associate related to Hafizi with two children, who entered the home moments before the shooting. Macdonald was not known to police and has no links to organised crime.

Moshtaba Hafizi last year beat a charge of attempting to acquire illegal drugs. His older brother, Mustafa, a former senior member of the Hells Angels outlaw motorcycle gang, spent five years in prison over a shooting at Parramatta in 2012.

He told a judge, sentencing him for tax fraud in 2023, that he had turned his back on organised crime to focus on his family. Court documents identify him as an associate of exiled Alameddine family patriarch, Rafat Alameddine, who fled Australia for Lebanon in 2022 amid increased police scrutiny.

Detectives are yet to establish why Moshtaba Hafizi was targeted and whether Wednesday’s shooting is linked to ongoing conflicts between the Alameddine family and rival groups including the self-proclaimed Coconut Cartel. Detectives are investigating whether the shooting is related to the murder of Tapia, a biomedical engineering student at the University of Technology Sydney.

Neither Tapia nor Macdonald had any known links to organised crime. Tapia’s only interaction with police was through a singular traffic offence. His relatives told the Herald on Tuesday that he was an innocent victim.

“What we are seeing at the moment is not the act of a genuine human, that disregard for human life, to shoot at people that are innocent, or they’re not even certain [they are] other people that they’re in a contest with, shows they don’t care,” Lanyon said on Thursday.

Minns maintained confidence in NSW Police to make arrests over this week’s killings, but conceded that public shootings had increased in frequency.

“That’s a major concern for me,” he said.

With Jack Gramenz and Michael McGowan

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