Driver who saw bikie Mick Hawi get shot dead in execution-style murder outside Fitness First turned his dashcam off ONE SECOND before the gunman opened fire
- Mick Hawi was shot dead outside a Fitness First gym in Sydney in February 2018
- Matthew Kellaway saw the shooting but his dashcam turned off just beforehand
- Yusuf Guney Nazlioglu, 38, and Jamal Eljaidi, 32, both deny murdering Mr Hawi
An eyewitness to the shooting murder of former senior bikie Mick Hawi in a gym car park unwittingly turned off his dashcam a second before the fatal shots rang out, a trial has been told.
Matthew Kellaway drove into the Fitness First Rockdale car park a minute before Mr Hawi – a former rising star of the Comancheros – was executed on February 15, 2018.
Yusuf Guney Nazlioglu, 38, is accused of being the masked gunman while Jamal Eljaidi, 32, is accused of being his getaway driver.
Mick Hawi (pictured with his wife Carolina Gonzalez) was shot outside a Fitness First gym
Both have pleaded not guilty to murder in the NSW Supreme Court.
The trial on Wednesday was shown footage from Mr Kellaway’s front and rear dashcams as he drove into undercover parking opposite the gym entrance at 12.05pm.
At the same time, Mr Hawi left the gym and entered his black four-wheel-drive Mercedes parked at the gym entrance.
As Mr Kellaway turned off his engine, which stopped the dashcams’ continuous recording, he heard ‘a couple of bangs’ and through his rear-vision mirror, saw a person beside Mr Hawi’s car.
‘It was pretty much dead centre in my rear-view mirror,’ he told the trial.
‘Because of the bangs, I figured they were firing a gun into the car.’
Yusuf Guney Nazlioglu, 38, is accused of being the masked gunman while Jamal Eljaidi (pictured), 32, is accused of being his getaway driver
Mr Hawi’s wife Carolina Gonzalez was pictured with a juice outside court on Wednesday
He said the gunman was ‘fairly animated’ and was entirely in black, including a balaclava, which was ‘somewhat uncharacteristic’ for the area.
‘It was a fairly animated sort of thing, (he was) reaching into the car a little bit and then they sprinted off pretty quickly,’ Mr Kellaway said.
He grabbed a medical care bag from his car and found Mr Hawi unresponsive in the car.
In a triple-zero call a minute later, Mr Kellaway tells the operator he ‘didn’t get a good look’ at the incident and says he assumes his dashcam had recorded it.
Triggered by unrelated movement in front of the car, Mr Kellaway’s front-facing dashcam turned on and recorded the sounds of the gunshots but the rear camera remained off during the shooting.
The Crown alleges Nazlioglu and Eljaidi torched the getaway car minutes after the shooting and escaped in a second car, found in Rosebery a month later.
DNA consistent with Eljaidi’s was found in that car but his barrister has suggested secondary transfer could be involved.
Nazlioglu, a former friend of Mr Hawi, denies being the balaclava-clad gunman, with his barrister telling the jury on Tuesday others had a greater motive to kill.
Mr Hawi became national president of the Comancheros at just 22 but relinquished the role in 2009 when he was sent to prison.
He later had tension with Comancheros leader Mark Buddle but Mr Hawi’s wife, Carolina Gonzalez, told the trial on Tuesday it was not bikie related.
The trial continues.