By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim
A member of the Sydney Hamzy crime family asked a 23-year-old male individual that he’d befriended in early 2021, to partner up with a second person to kill members of the Alameddine criminal network. Four people were on the hitlist. The payment was $2 million for one killed, and $800,000 for any other member, with the money for any murder to be split between the killers.
The offer was made in November 2021, after the Hamzy family member had supplied the 23-year-old with $30,000 worth of drugs yet to be paid for, along with a revolver and an encrypted phone. So, the 23-year-old was already indebted. And a number of locations frequented by the Alameddines, including World Gym in the western Sydney suburb of Prospect, were suggested for a hit.
A third individual was included in the crime in order to drive the car. The assailants were all provided with weapons: the 23-year-old man was in possession of a SKS style assault rifle, the second shooter was armed with an M16, and the driver carried a 9mm pistol.
The trio then arrived in the carpark of the gym at 10.53 am on 29 November 2021, and they waited for their victims to show up.
Two cars carrying individuals from the Alameddine network arrived, with four men getting out and starting to walk to the gym. The offenders drove towards them, and when about 20 metres away, the driver started firing his pistol. The other two assailants then jumped out of the car, firing on the Alameddines with their rifles. And the four men from the crime network ran into the gym.
Eighteen rounds were fired at the four men from the Alameddine gang, one of whom was hit in the ankle, which resulted in the fracturing of his tibia and fibula. Multiple rounds also pierced the walls of a nearby childcare centre with three children and two childcare workers inside. And the three assailants then fled the scene in the car and drove to Blacktown, where they torched it.
Four counts of attempting murder
The 23-year-old shooter pleaded guilty to four counts of shooting with intent to murder, contrary to section 29 of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW). The maximum penalty that applies to this crime is up to 25 years imprisonment, and a standard non-parole period (SNPP) of 10 years also applies.
An SNPP is a guidepost or reference point for a sentencing judge, when determining the minimum term an offender must spend behind bars before being eligible to apply for release on parole.
At the time of the shooting in the carpark, the 23-year-old man was out on parole in respect of having been involved in a confrontation between rival gangs, and he was convicted over having thrown a Molotov cocktail with intent to harm. This saw him serve 4 years of a 6 year and 9 month sentence that had been reduced on appeal, and his bail was revoked following the World Gym incident.
Psychiatrist Dr Richard Furst told the court that the offender had “below average intelligence” and diagnosed him with substance use disorder. He added that the young man had shown remorse following the shooting incident, and he considered that the offending had been motivated by drug use, and if this use was not an issue, then neither would be reoffending.
The court further heard that the 23-year-old had a troubled childhood, with a violent father, and he started taking drugs at 14. By the age of 17, he was forced to leave home and join a gang due to the extent of his drug use. And between the ages of 18 and 22, the young man now in gaol had spent most of his time in incarceration.
However, then NSW District Court Judge Paul McGuire outlined that the man has displayed an “absolute disregard for life and public safety and a willingness to engage in a most extreme form of violence for financial reward”.
His Honour set out that the incident endangered innocent people, including young children, so the sentence had to be a harsh enough to deter others from participating “in organised gangland violence”. The judge added that the objective seriousness of the offending was mid-range, as the “paid hitman” had attempted to kill multiple people and had envisioned conducing more murders.
In sentencing, one of the counts was more serious than the others because a bullet hit a man in the ankle. Aggravating factors included the crime being conducted in company and for financial gain, along with having been committed with disregard for public safety and further, whilst the man was on conditional release.
“I consider that a degree of accumulation is necessary in the present case because the circumstances of each of the principal offences represents separate criminal conduct with separate elements,” remarked the judge at one point of sentencing. He said at another point, “In aggregating the sentence, the principle of totality applies, and there must be some accumulation of the sentences.”
The principle of totality requires that when a judge sentences a person over multiple offences, the resulting punishment for each must be aggregated together to form one sentence that reflects the overall criminality of offending. The principle of accumulation requires that when aggregating sentences for more serious crimes, the result is lengthy enough to reflect all of the criminality.
On 14 June 2024, Judge McGuire handed down an aggregated sentence of 23 years imprisonment, with non-parole set at 16 years. The sentence, made from the combining of four separate sentences for each individual count, also reflected a 50 percent sentencing discount due to the utilitarian value of his early guilty pleas and the man providing assistance to law enforcement by supplying information, as well as testifying, against his co-offender.
Grounds established
The offender, who was 23 years of age at the time of the shooting, appealed his sentence to the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal (NSWCCA) on 18 July 2025. He did so based on two grounds. The first involved the sentencing judge having failed “to correctly apply the principle of totality to the sentence imposed”, and the second was that the resulting sentence was manifestly excessive.
On totality, NSWCCA Justice Deborah Sweeney quoted High Court Justice Michael McHugh in 1997’s Postiglione versus Regina, which found that “The totality principle of sentencing requires a judge who is sentencing an offender for a number of offences to ensure that the aggregation of the sentences appropriate for each offence is a just and appropriate measure of the total criminality involved.”
Her Honour explained that the offending involved the attempt to murder four people, so “some concurrence and some accumulation of the indicative sentences in the aggregate sentence” was needed, which means partial concurrence of sentences, but as multiple crimes were involved, a more severe criminality should be reflected via these sentences being served in part consecutively.
The issue with Judge McGuire’s sentence is that it almost reflects each indicative sentence being served consecutively, or alongside one another, which reveals the “degree of accumulation in the aggregate sentence” being misapplied. The degree of accumulation also eroded the effect of the sentencing discounts. So, the sentence was manifestly excessive, and both grounds were made out.
In resentencing the offender, her Honour considered the Bugmy principles, or that social disadvantage should be reflected as a mitigating factor in sentencing, and that the new sentence should too show that special circumstances were found.
Section 44 of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 (NSW) provides that a parole period must not exceed a third of the overall time an offender has been sentenced to, unless special circumstances are found. Such circumstances must indicate that the person being sentenced would benefit from a longer period of supervision in the community.
On 27 August 2025, Justice Sweeney ordered that the original sentence applying to the offender who was 23 at time of the commission of his offence be resentenced to 15 years prison time, with a non-parole period of 10 years and 6 months. And her Honour’s colleagues, NSWCCA Justices Des Fagan and Micheal Ball, agreed with her orders.
