Sydney police probe second suspected mistaken identity killing in 48 hours

Two men are dead in Sydney within forty-eight hours, and police believe at least one of them was shot by the wrong people entirely.

On Tuesday morning at 3:40 a.m., a university student in his twenties was killed during a home invasion in Glen Alpine, in the city's southwest. Marco Tapia had no criminal record—police knew him only from a traffic matter. He died at the scene. The next afternoon, around 3:15 p.m. on Wednesday, emergency responders arrived at a home in Merrylands West to find a man in his forties dead in the doorway after a drive-by shooting. He too died where he fell.

Police now suspect both killings were the work of organised crime, and that at least one victim was simply in the wrong place. The man shot on Wednesday appears to have arrived at the Merrylands West address moments before the gunfire. The residents of that home were well known to police for their links to organised crime, but the dead man himself had no such connections. Detective Superintendent Simon Glasser said the victim was "quite likely" a business associate of the residents—someone who happened to be standing in a doorway when violence meant for someone else erupted.

The Tuesday killing of Tapia struck police as particularly stark. New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon described it as "completely unacceptable," the death of what appeared to be an innocent life caught in organised crime's crossfire. "The fact that what appears to be an innocent life was taken is something that no community should accept and no community should live in fear of violence," Lanyon said. Shortly after Tapia's death, a known organised crime figure posted on social media: "popped the wrong person, didn't even get the right house." The message suggested the shooter knew immediately that a mistake had been made.

This pattern is not new to Sydney. Earlier this year, Chris Baghsarian, an eighty-five-year-old grandfather, was taken from his home in a pre-dawn raid. His body was found two weeks later near a golf course. Police believe he too was killed in a case of mistaken identity. Several people have been arrested and charged. Last year, a plumber was shot dead in front of his family home in what police also described as a mistaken identity killing.

The two shootings within forty-eight hours have intensified scrutiny on a cycle of violence that appears to claim people who have nothing to do with the disputes driving it. Police say they will not tolerate innocent members of the community being caught in organised crime's reach, but the speed with which two deaths occurred—and the apparent randomness of at least one—suggests the problem is accelerating rather than contained.