Addresses from official databases might be finding their way into the hands of criminals, an ex-police officer warns, as botched shootings spark community alarm.
A man in his 40s was gunned down outside a west Sydney duplex where it is believed he was working on Wednesday afternoon.
The shooting came a day after a university student was shot dead in his family's southwest Sydney home.
It is at least the fifth suspected case of mistaken identity since May 2025, with fears reckless overseas criminal leaders are worsening the potentially misguided attacks.
Despite the back-to-back killings, the NSW government insisted the situation was under control.
"NSW Police are on top of this," Acting Premier Prue Car told reporters on Thursday.
Retired NSW Police Sergeant Glenn Gorick said two suspected mistaken identity shootings in two days was "unheard of".
He said a major question for authorities should be where the shooters were getting the victims' addresses.
"Whether it be law enforcement, whether it be council enforcement, or people with access to the electoral rolls… but someone is divulging information to get these addresses," he said.
"And sometimes the intended victim doesn't live there anymore, but the address is still currently theirs, and that's where I think these mistaken identities are occurring."
Whether the botched hits were organised from overseas and carried out by young, local guns-for-hire will form one line of detectives' inquiries.
There was a 27% spike in homicides in NSW in 2025 — 34 more victims than the previous year in data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday.
More than half of the victims in 2025 were killed by people they did not know.
Sydney residents were rightfully becoming increasingly fearful that they could inadvertently be caught up in gang violence as a result of recent attacks, Gorick said.
"These are just everyday Australians going about their lives, and now they're thinking: Well, they got the wrong house there. Now, am I next?" he said.
But criminology expert Murray Lee said it was important to not let the recent spate of killings lead to "the next moral panic", or to a knee-jerk policy response from the government.
"It's really important to send the message that this sort of offending's wrong… about why kids shouldn't get involved in this," said the professor at the University of Sydney Law School.
"But the idea that you can just legislate or police your way out of the problem, I think, is always going to come up short."
Prof Lee said strike forces organised to go hard on crime sometimes had the unintended effect of getting the community offside, making policing harder.
"These are social and community issues, and I think they require nuanced social and community policing," he said.
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