Innocents Shot to Death

At about 3.40 on Tuesday morning, 1 September, several men forced their way into a two-storey house in Glen Alpine, near Campbelltown in Sydney's south-west, and shot a 23-year-old university student named Marco Tapia dead in his bed while his family slept in the house.¹ He was not known to police. His record, according to reporting that followed, consisted of a traffic matter.

At about 3.15 the following afternoon, a grey Audi that had been parked off Bruce Street in Merrylands West for roughly ninety minutes pulled into the street as a work ute arrived in the driveway of a house it had been watching.¹ A gloved hand came out of the rear passenger window. Neighbours counted up to eight shots. Joshua MacDonald, a 40-year-old electrician who had arrived at the house with a friend and the friend's two young daughters, just collected from school, was hit in the head and died at the scene. His family told 7News that his friend had described him moving to put himself between the gunfire and the girls.²

Detective Superintendent Simon Glasser said the people who lived at the Merrylands West address were well known to police and the victim was not, and that Mr MacDonald had no adverse holdings with police and no link to organised crime.¹ It was, he said, possible that the wrong man had been shot.

Two men in two days, in their homes, with no connection to the people the gunmen were looking for. By Nine's count, they were the 50th and 51st shootings in Sydney this year.³

What was said

The response from the state's institutions came within a day and followed a pattern.

The Commissioner of Police, Mal Lanyon, said the murder of two innocent people was a tragedy police would never tolerate, and that he would increase proactive resources beyond the 150 already dedicated to the problem, to reassure the public.¹ He characterised the shooters as inexperienced people who had taken a job for very little money and would face very long sentences when caught. A burnt-out car found in Denham Court, he said, might have been the getaway vehicle.

The Police Minister, Yasmin Catley, rejected the suggestion that organised crime had grown out of control.⁴ The model on the streets, she said, was one in which organised crime groups recruit young men to do their work for them, and she likened arresting them to whack-a-mole. She pointed to Operation Falcon, the task force set up in May 2025, and to more than 800 arrests since. The government had changed legislation, increased penalties and given the Crime Commission extra powers, she said, and would do more if police asked.

The Deputy Premier, Prue Car, said organised crime had never been acceptable in New South Wales.⁴

The Opposition Leader, Kellie Sloane, said the people of Sydney were right to be terrified, and that organised crime had become disorganised crime, with offshore figures hiring teenagers to carry out erratic shootings.⁴ A Coalition government, she said, would double the Crime Commission's funding and go after unexplained wealth. Her police spokesman, Anthony Roberts, proposed a twelve-year minimum sentence for anyone involved in recruiting guns for hire.

Every one of those statements may be sincere. Together they are also, almost word for word, the statements the same institutions made the last time this happened in the same suburb.

Merrylands, December 2003

On 8 December 2003, The Australian reported that a man in his fifties had been shot at point-blank range at his home in Bristol Street, Merrylands, the night before.⁵ It was, the paper said, the latest victim of a wave of shooting murders across south-west Sydney that had begun that August outside a mosque in Lakemba and had already claimed at least four lives. A previous attempt had been made on the man's life at the same address in September. Police Taskforce Gain, established to investigate shootings in the area, was notified. The report described the killings as a major political problem for the Carr government.

Bristol Street and Bruce Street are a few minutes' walk apart. The task force then was Gain; now it is Falcon. The government then promised to act; so does this one. The opposition then said the government had lost control of the streets; so does this one.

What has changed, on the account given by the commissioner and the minister this week, is the labour market. In 2003 the men doing the shooting were, in the main, the men in the feud. In 2026, by the authorities' own description, they are hired: young, inexperienced, paid very little, recruited by people who may not be in the country, and replaced as fast as they are arrested. A minimum sentence for the recruiter, the opposition's proposal, is an attempt to price that market. Unexplained wealth orders, the other proposal, are an attempt to reach the people at the top of it, whose assets, unlike their shooters, cannot be replaced.

Whether either works is a question for the next twenty-three years. What the record shows is that the promises of this week have been made before, in this suburb, to people who had nothing to do with it.

The men

Marco Tapia was a 23-year-old student. Joshua MacDonald was a 40-year-old electrical contractor whose aunt and uncle, Darlene and Trevor Norton, described his death as cold-blooded murder and asked why, if police knew the house next door was a target, the street was not being patrolled.² Police have not answered that publicly. Anyone with information about either shooting is asked to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.