A ‘gangster mum’ slain alongside her hairdresser in a brazen execution may have been targeted because of a romance gone wrong.
Lametta Fadlallah, 48, was brutally gunned down in the backseat of a Toyota 4WD at Panania, western Sydney, on August 14.
Police are now hunting four gunmen who unleased 15 bullets through the windows of the vehicle also hitting Amy Hazouri, 39, who had just finished blow-drying Ms Fadlallah’s hair for an engagement party at a nearby Lebanese restaurant they were both set to attend.
The popular eatery is owned by Ms Fadlallah’s partner Adel Dayoub. The two had been dating for 12 months.
Daily Mail Australia does not suggest Mr Dayoub had any involvement in the shooting, nor are police investigating him.
Detectives are convinced Ms Fadlallah was the intended target and that Ms Hazouri was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Sitting in the front seat was a 16-year-old TikTok star with 100,000 followers and her 20-year-old boyfriend. The traumatised pair managed to escape the hail of gunfire.
One of the shooters pushed the teen’s head to one side while leaning through the window of the vehicle and pulled the trigger. She has struggled to eat or sleep since the tragedy.
Daily Mail Australia revealed on Wednesday Ms Fadlallah may have become a target after reluctantly talking to police about her past.
Adel Dayoub and Lametta Fadlallah (pictured together) had been dating for a little over 12 months and she was getting to know his family before her death on Saturday
Detectives are convinced Ms Fadlallah was the intended target and that Ms Hazouri (pictured) was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time
When she learned someone she cared deeply about was in serious trouble with the law, she reportedly contacted the NSW Crime Commission.
That decision made her a ‘marked woman’, Ms Fadlallah’s friend said.
In the months before she was shot dead Ms Fadlallah installed multiple high-tech security cameras at her Hendy Avenue home.
Those cameras are likely to have captured the moment she was ambushed in the driveway.
‘I think she knew it was coming,’ the friend said.
She was well aware of the price of speaking to police.
‘As it was put to me, the killers don’t think they have broken any rules to stay away from women and family because that’s not why she was targeted. She is dead because she snitched,’ a friend said.
‘She didn’t deserve to die… She was a good woman and did everything for everyone, but they’re the rules. In their eyes, that’s something worthy of being murdered for.’
She rented a tidy dark brick duplex in Hendy St, Revesby and her 16-year-old son went to a private school in the area
In May she paid to have an advanced security system installed with at least three cameras facing onto the street where she was ambushed and shot dead
Adel Dayoub (pictured) is helping police investigate the 48-year-old’s shooting death
Ms Fadlallah is understood to have been associated with underworld figures for years and was at one point married to Abraham Derbas in the 1990s.
He was a key member of the Telopea St Gang – coined after the Punchbowl, Western Sydney street which rose to infamy between 1998 and 2000 as a hornets’ nest of Middle Eastern gang activity.
Derbas is understood to have long since turned his back on a life of crime and has not been in a relationship with Ms Fadlallah for several years.
More recently Ms Fadlallah was the long term girlfriend of Kings Cross standover man Safi – who was found dead in a Sydney apartment in January 2021 after suffering a heart attack.
Bizarrely, the crime kingpins swapped partners with Safi’s former lover Hilal going on to marry Derbas.
Detectives are investigating the links between the pair and other criminals Ms Fadlallah could have associated with – and whether she had information that others wanted to keep silent.
Lameta Fadlallah (pictured), 48, was one of two women killed in a hail of bullets
Forensic police work at the cordoned off crime scene on Sunday morning (pictured)
Her hairdresser friend, Amy Hazouri, was also killed during the attack
‘She was right into the life. She would carry the guns for the boys, give alibis when needed and right up till she was killed mixing with gangsters,’ an underworld source who new Ms Fadlallah told the Daily Telegraph.
‘Lam was playing with the big boys and maybe knew too much.
‘She always thought she was smart but this is the most dangerous Sydney has ever been. Killing women so openly is next level.’
Her former husband Safi, at 45-years-old and weighing 200kg, was found dead in his Stapleton Street, Pendle Hill unit after a neighbour was heard shouting for help around 4am.
Safi, 45, was arrested his October 2020 (pictured) on weapons charges
He had been released from prison only weeks earlier, with police locating drug paraphernalia in the unit.
The ‘major’ gangland player had close links to criminals and was feared among Sydney’s underworld.
The former bikie and Kings Cross bouncer survived 42 stab wounds while in jail in 2010.
The injuries put him in a coma for five months, with police saying he only survived due to his size.
A car was found burnt out in the nearby suburb of Panania shortly after the shooting
***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk