Hunt for gunman after man shot dead in Sydney’s west

A major police manhunt is under way after a Sydney man, Osama Momani, became the second person killed in a public place shooting this week, the 22-year-old targeted outside a western Sydney home by at least one gunman.

Sitting in the passenger seat of a silver sedan on Tuesday, Momani was cut down when the car was sprayed with bullets just before 7pm in Regiment Grove, Winston Hills, a cul-de-sac in a housing estate.

Shot once in the chest, he staggered to a nearby home for assistance but succumbed to his injuries on the street outside.

Crime scene footage shows smeared blood on the front door of the house. Emergency services transferred Momani in a critical condition to Westmead Hospital, where he was declared dead.

CCTV obtained by the Herald shows a silver Toyota SUV fleeing the scene. It was later found well alight in nearby Old Toongabbie.

On Wednesday morning, police established Strike Force Karlgain to investigate the shooting. They are now working to establish if the car was stolen and if the numberplates on it were cloned, two hallmarks of gangland attacks in Sydney.

Momani was on bail for a raft of charges related to an alleged home invasion in Chester Hill in 2023. He had pleaded not guilty to aggravated break and enter, stalking, robbery and reckless wounding, and was due to face trial in the District Court next year.

“Our initial investigations suggest he attended that location from outside the local area. Why he was there is still forming part of the investigation,” Parramatta Police Area Command Superintendent Barry Vincent told reporters on Wednesday morning.

“We believe there was a second person in the vehicle who was uninjured and we are continuing to speak with that person.”

Vincent said he is “not aware of” any connection to Sunday night’s fatal pub shooting at Forest Lodge’s Harold Park Hotel in which Maradona Yalda, 31, was seriously injured and his associate Gilbert Shino, 39, was killed.

Yalda has long been linked to Assyrian organised crime gang DLASTHR – or “The Last Hour” – and Momani is also of Assyrian descent.

One neighbour told the Herald they had witnessed the man’s body being stretchered onto an ambulance on Tuesday night.

“I was in my room, and I saw red and blue flashing lights reflected on my neighbour’s house,” the teenager said. “So I ran downstairs, and I told my dad, and we went outside to see what was happening.

“We saw a whole lot of police cars and ambulances, and I saw a man on a stretcher being carried up into an ambulance, and he had been shot in the chest.”

The two shootings this week come after a period of relative calm following a series of tit-for-tat incidents linked to feuds within Sydney’s underworld.

NSW Police launched Taskforce Falcon in March in response to several public place shootings that targeted high-profile underworld figures. The Winston Hills shooting isn’t believed to be linked.

It comes as police arrested a teenager for his alleged role in a fatal shooting in Granville in May. He is expected to be charged with murder and attempted murder.

Dawood Zakaria, 32, and Parramatta solicitor Sylvan Singh, 25, were allegedly shot through the windscreen of a Toyota Hilux as it travelled on Woodville Road on May 25.

One of the car’s other occupants, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was thought to be the target of what investigators say was a gangland shooting. Both men in the back seat were uninjured.

Zakaria was in the passenger seat beside Singh, who was driving the ute and suffered several gunshot wounds to the arm and shoulder. He is not a member of the underworld and is not accused of wrongdoing.

Zakaria died in hospital.

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