A second guy, who is just 21 years old, has been charged with various offenses in connection with the drive-by shooting of a nine-year-old girl and will appear in Bankstown Local Court today.
After allegedly being on the run, Hassan Osseili was apprehended on Tuesday night and charged with offenses such as shooting with the intent to kill, conspiring and agreeing to kill someone, having an unregistered firearm in a public place, and participating in a criminal organization that contributes to criminal activity.
At 5.50 p.m. on Friday, the nine-year-old girl was in her pajamas and unloading groceries on Queens Road in Connells Point, Sydney’s south, with her mother and two other kids.
The nine-year-old was shot in the hip and taken by ambulance to Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick, where she underwent numerous surgeries for internal damage and is now in stable condition.
The house has been shot at twice in the previous nine months; last November, shots were fired at the same house.
In the hours after the incident, Mahmoud Rizk, 34, was detained after police discovered an abandoned black BMW on fire and two males allegedly tried to enter a red Mini Cooper.
He was charged with one count of shoot at with intent to murder.
About 8pm on Tuesday night, Raptor Squad officers arrested 21-year-old Osseili at a Greenacre residence following further inquiries, and took him to Bankstown Police Station.
Police recovered a loaded semiautomatic pistol found in bushland in southern Sydney which will be examined in connection with the shooting.
To further investigate the shooting, the Raptor Squad of NSW State Crime Command has established Strike Force Camiri.
Two automobiles, among them the burned-out BMW, have been confiscated for forensic and ballistic examination.
The guy who lived at the Connells Point residence where the girl was hot but wasn’t there when the shooting occurred, according to Detective Superintendent Grant Taylor, was the intended target of the shooting.
Although it is not associated with bikers, Det Supt Taylor added, “it is tied to criminal networks that we are aware of.”
It was unclear, he added, if the kids were the intended victims, although the nine-year-old, who was dressed in pajamas, would have been difficult to mistake for an adult.
He labelled the shooting an ‘ungainly act of violence’.
‘This shooting was a dangerous, ungainly act of violence that resulted in a child being rushed to hospital for surgery,’ he said.
‘A multi-level response was immediately deployed, which saw Raptor Squad and other specialist officers work in unison to immediately locate an alleged offender within hours, and gather other crucial forensic evidence.’
Emergency services rushed to the home at Queens Road, Connells Point, following reports of a multiple shots fired, said police.
First responders carried out first aid on the nine-year-old before the arrival of NSW Ambulance paramedics.
‘I ran outside after I heard the shots and I could smell the gun powder,’ one neighbour told the Daily Telegraph.
‘I could hear a woman wailing.’
After the attack last November, when the Connells Point home was peppered with nine bullets, two men home at the time escaped injury.
One neighbour, who wished to remain anonymous, labelled police ‘weak’ saying they didn’t ‘do enough’ to investigate the first shooting.
‘If they had investigated properly this wouldn’t have happened. We never heard anything back from police after the first shooting,’ he said.
On that occasion police also found a burned out car located nearby.