One man is dead and another is in hospital with serious wounds after a shooting outside a Sydney pub which police described as “outrageous” and “brazen”.
Emergency services were called to the Harold Park hotel on Ross Street in Forest Lodge in Sydney’s inner west at about 6.40pm on Sunday.
New South Wales police said two people had been shot multiple times by unknown assailants who left the scene by car.
One man died at the scene while a second was treated by paramedics for gunshot wounds. He was in a critical condition on Monday morning after finishing a second round of surgeries.
In a press conference on Monday, Det Supt Alfio Sergi of the Leichhardt Police Area Command said “numerous” shots were fired outside pub, with some being described as “whizzing by” by a woman working there while she was picking up glasses outside.
Sergi said it had been an “extremely dangerous” situation, and although the investigation was in its early stages, he believed it was a “targeted attack”.
“Obviously we’ll be looking at [any] links with organised crime networks, that will be a focus of our investigation,” he said.
Sergi told 2GB on Monday morning the two victims had been walking from the pub to their car when they appear to have been “ambushed” by one or more gunman.
A 39-year-old man was shot. Despite being treated by police, whom Sergi said were “nearby”, as well as paramedics and a local doctor, he died at the scene.
Sergi said the other victim, a 31-year-old man, was “chased by the offender, he was shot a number of times, he slumped at the back of the hotel, again police rendered first aid assisted by some medical students who were in the hotel”.
He described the shootings as an “outrageous, brazen, callous attack”, adding that a bullet hit one of the pub windows and “narrowly missed” a female staff member.
Sergi said police were searching for a dark-coloured vehicle and appealed for witnesses and anyone with dashcam footage of the incident to come forward.
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One eyewitness told the ABC she heard more than a dozen shots ring out.
“It was such rapid fire I actually thought it was firecrackers, until I saw a family running down the street and screaming,” she said.
Another told the Sydney Morning Herald she saw a man being shot “at least six times” in the neck, chest and legs.
Police have established a crime scene, and Leichhardt detectives – with assistance from the homicide squad – are investigating the incident.
– Australian Associated Press contributed to this report
