A hairdresser who was openly shot dead in a gangland assassination had just finished doing a mobster mother’s hair and was getting ready for a night out when both were killed.
Amy Hazouri, 39, had just ended her shift at her hair salon in Bankstown, in Sydney’s south west, and was sitting in the back of a Toyota 4WD with her friend and customer Lametta Fadlallah, 48, when both were fatally shot at 6 p.m. on Saturday.
Fadlallah is thought to have been the target of the hit, since he was a member of the criminal underworld who was formerly married to Shadi Derbas of the city’s Telopea Street Gang and subsequently a lover of Helal Safi, who was once stabbed 42 times in jail.
Ms. Hazouri’s family, however, said that she was a ‘nice kid’ who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
According to the Daily Mail Australia, Ms. Hazouri worked six days a week to support her ailing mother in Lebanon and was planning a trip to see her.
Now, however, she will have a very different homecoming, as her family is gathering funds to carry her coffin back to Lebanon for her burial. Ms Hazouri’s sister Manal said on Monday that Ms Hazouri had sent a part of her monthly earnings to fund the family’s expenses throughout Lebanon’s protracted economic turmoil.
Sureyya, a friend of eight years who works in a store next to Ms. Hazouri’s salon, Jocelyne Chidiac Hair, said she was thrilled to return to Lebanon.
She was planned a journey with her sister to see her mother before touring the Middle East, including a stop in Turkey, with her sister.
Due to her bad health, Ms. Hazouri’s mother is unable to go to Australia and is depending on contributions to assist pay for the repatriation of her daughter’s remains to Lebanon.
The family wishes to emphasize that she was a “innocent person” in the incident, corroborating a previous police judgment that she was likely collateral damage in the assault on Ms. Fadlallah.
Sureyya told Daily Mail Australia, “She was the most gorgeous woman.” “She used to come here and converse.
Alternatively, she would call me and offer, “Let me do your hair; I’ll make you feel good.”
Sureyya said that Ms. Hazouri had worked at the salon for up to eight years and was well-liked by both employees and clients.
She enjoyed her profession and was adored by everybody. She was a decent girl who was unmarried and childless.
“She would ordinarily be present at this time; it’s very unfortunate, and I feel terrible for her parents.”
Sureyya said that salon owner Jocelyne Chidiac was’very saddened’ by Ms Hazouri’s passing since the two were’very close’
Sunday, colleagues at the salon tweeted a memorial in which they expressed their ‘devastation’ at the unexpected passing.
The tribute said, “We are devastated, our hearts are crushed; you left us too soon.” “May your memories endure forever… till we meet again”
It is believed that Ms. Hazouri cut Ms. Fadlallah’s hair on Saturday afternoon.
Moments before to the tragic incident, they were subsequently preparing to “go out for the night.”
How the shooting occurred
On Saturday night, when the ladies sat in the backseat of a silver Toyota 4WD outside her home on Hendy St, Panania in western Sydney, up to a dozen shots were fired through the glass.
The 20-year-old male motorist tried to evade the assault by pulling over and calling for assistance around the corner. A girl of 16 years old was also in the automobile.
According to authorities, both witnesses are traumatized by what they saw, but are cooperating as best they can.
Over the last three decades, Ms. Fadlallah has been married to two of Harbour City’s most prominent crime leaders and has been a “active” participant in their murky underworld.
There are concerns that underworld rulers have “ripped up the rule book” that originally stated that women and children would always be off-limits. In the 1990s, Ms. Fadlallah was married to Shadi Derbas, a major member of the Telopea St Gang – named after a street in Western Sydney’s Punchbowl – which grew to notoriety between 1998 and 2000 as a hub of Middle Eastern gang activity.
More recently, she was the long-term partner of underworld figure Helal Safi, who died of a heart attack in a Sydney flat in January 2021.
Mark Morri, crime editor of the Daily Telegraph, said that Ms. Fadlallah was “gunned down like a crime figure” and was actively engaged in criminal activity.
“You wouldn’t just state that she was on the periphery,” he told Monday morning’s Sunrise anchor David Koch.
She knew some of the most senior figures in Sydney’s criminal underworld, and maybe she knew too much; perhaps she was engaged in a deal where someone felt slighted, and that’s the price you pay in that world right now. Mr. Morri said that there are at least two to three active contracts to murder “floating about the city” at any one moment and that killing someone, which was formerly a last resort, has become a “fast alternative” for resolving a disagreement.
There are a few professionals, but the traditional cliché of a well-known assassin is no longer true. These are only little children, he said.
An underworld insider familiar with Ms. Fadlallah told the Daily Telegraph that she had been “playing with the big guys” and may have known too much.
She was completely immersed in life. She would carry the firearms for the lads, provide alibis when necessary, and socialize with criminals until she was dead,’ they alleged.
She always believed herself to be intelligent, but this is the most hazardous time Sydney has ever faced. Killing women so brazenly is a new low. Helal Safi, Fadlallah’s longtime partner, escaped a 2010 jailhouse assassination attempt after being stabbed 42 times by rival gang members.
His injuries were so serious that he remained in a coma for five months, with the authorities attributing his survival to his stature.
In Sydney’s underworld, he was described as a “big player” with ties to bikies and criminals who was feared.
It was already thought that Sydney’s continuing gang war was out of control, with 14 execution-style murders occurring in the city over the previous two years, as Middle Eastern criminal groups and their bikie muscle battle for control of the lucrative drug trade in the wake of the epidemic.
With the addition of victims 15 and 16 to the list of overworked detectives, authorities claim it is evident that underworld leaders have “ripped up the regulations” and that the streets have never been more violent.
Detectives are probing the connections between the duo and other criminals with whom Ms. Fadlallah may have been linked, as well as the possibility that she had information that others want to keep secret.
The police have created a number of crime scenes as they investigate the whereabouts of four burned-out vehicles dispersed across three western Sydney districts.
It is thought that the murderers burned stolen automobiles, some of which may have been installed as decoys, to confuse investigators and make DNA tracing harder. On Sunday, Detective Inspector Danny Doherty of the NSW Police acknowledged that the shooting was “unique” in that it violated a “unwritten rule” among Sydney’s underworld that women and families were off-limits.
He said that the police will spare no effort to apprehend the criminals.
“This is a heinous assault on two ladies. They are no longer alive. It was a deliberate murder, an actual assassination, and it occurred in a Sydney public street,’ he claimed.
It is inadmissible by any standard. It is really unprecedented. And we are committed to finding the answers for the family.’
They do not discriminate on the basis of gender. Every rule book has been discarded, which is alarming.’
Share on Facebook «||» Share on Twitter «||» Share on Reddit «||» Share on LinkedIn