By The Straits Times | Created at 2026-06-07 02:28:32 | Updated at 2026-06-07 19:28:58
17 hours ago
SYDNEY - A manhunt was underway in Sydney on June 7 after shots were fired at the venue of a planned funeral for a prominent underworld figure killed in Vietnam, police and local media said.
The purported leader of Sydney’s so-called “Coconut Cartel”, Lorenzo Lemalu, was shot dead last month outside a seafood restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City.
Vietnamese police arrested two suspects, both of Samoan nationality, who later admitted to the killing in a televised confession.
On June 6, footage emerged of a gunman in a car firing multiple shots at a venue slated to host Lemalu’s funeral in Sydney’s west.
The video on a social media channel sharing updates about the city’s underworld showed a man firing an assault rifle while another tells him to aim for the venue’s windows and laughing.
Police told AFP no one was wounded and they later found an abandoned car linked to the shooting set alight.
The funeral was held at a prominent Sydney mosque on June 7, national broadcaster ABC said.
Regular Sydneysiders have found themselves in the crosshairs of escalating gang violence in Australia’s largest city this year.
In February, elderly grandfather Chris Baghsarian was found dead after being kidnapped in what police said was a case of mistaken identity.
Neither Baghsarian nor his family had any underworld connections and the kidnappers were instead targeting the relative of a man linked to the west Sydney-based Alameddine crime network, police said.
Leading Australian criminologist Vince Hurley has warned the city’s organised crime groups are becoming “more reckless”. AFP
