The bikie clubhouse where a man is believed to have killed himself on Easter Monday has a history of bloodshed.
Bandidos were seen consoling one another outside their Brunswick, north Melbourne clubhouse after a gunshot was heard about 7.20am this morning.
It was far from the first time police officers have set up a crime scene outside the Weston Street fortress.
Today’s death was just steps away from where a hitman pumped five bullets into the chest of former Bandido enforcer Toby Mitchell in November 2011.
Australia’s most notorious clubhouse: Police are seen out the front of the Bandidos Clubhouse in Brunswick, in Melbourne’s north, where a man died on Monday morning
Former Bandido enforcer Toby Mitchell was repeatedly shot in the chest as he walked out of nearby gym in November 2011
Mitchell survived and runs a Melbourne tattoo parlour with former AFL footballer Jake King
If not for the scar running from his naval to his neck, you almost wouldn’t be able to tell Mitchell was once knocking on death’s door
It was 4.30pm, broad daylight, when the hitman swooped, blasting away and leaving Mitchell sprawled on the street.
But the killer failed to finish the job.
After extensive surgery, Mitchell survived, The Age reporting he underwent 30 operations and lost his ‘kidney, gall bladder and most of his liver’.
He now runs a tattoo parlour with former AFL player Jake King in South Melbourne and takes every opportunity to show off his healthy body on Instagram. You’d scarcely be able to tell he had been on death’s door, if not for the scar running from his naval to his neck.
The clubhouse, painted black with imposing iron fences, was the scene of an actual killing in May 2014 when several men set upon Dandenong man Michael Strike.
The 38-year-old was dragged into the clubhouse after drunkenly hassling a dog named Trouble that was tied up out the front.
Strike was repeatedly bashed with his head even rammed into a stripper’s pole, the Victorian Supreme Court heard in 2016. He bled out and his body was dumped in Keilor cemetery.
Police investigators raided the clubhouse on at least two occasions, squads standing guard as detectives hauled away bags of evidence.
Three men were later convicted of crimes connected to the killing. (One bikie appealed his manslaughter charge the Criminal Court of Appeal last year but his decade-long jail sentence was upheld.)
Crime scene: A detective hauls a bag of evidence out of the Bandido’s Clubhouse in 2014 after a body was found at a cemetery in Keilor
Victoria’s Supreme Court would later hear Michael Strike was dragged into the clubhouse and beaten up, with his head rammed into a metal stripper’s pole
The Bandidos are a ‘one-percenter’ motorcycle club with chapters around Australia and the world
Bullets rang out in the street again about a year ago. Three men were shot in the legs as they walked along the street about 11.30pm last April.
The trio, aged in their 20s, 40s and 50s respectively, suffered serious but not life threatening injuries.
Investigators said they believed the men were bikie associates, possibly involved in a feud.
Police and paramedics seen at the Bandidos clubhouse on Monday morning after a man died in a suspected suicide
It was just another violent chapter in the history of the clubhouse when officers unfurled their crime scene tape out the front on Monday morning.
Investigations continue.
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