{"id":928521,"date":"2026-10-15T02:10:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T02:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/928521\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T02:10:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T02:10:13","slug":"nsw-police-charge-19-year-old-man-over-fairfield-school-pick-up-attempted-shooting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/928521\/","title":{"rendered":"NSW Police charge 19-year-old man over Fairfield school pick-up attempted shooting"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 19-year-old has been charged with coordinating the attempted shooting of a man and his teenage daughter at school pick-up in Sydney’s west.<\/p>\n

NSW Police were called to a school in Fairfield about 3pm on June 9 after a handgun was pointed at a 44-year-old man and the 15-year-old girl inside a ute.<\/p>\n

The man and girl managed to get out of the car and runaway from the gunman, who was dressed in black and wearing a balaclava.<\/p>\n

Taskforce Falcon Commander Detective Acting Superintendent Jason Smith said the gunman then pursued the teenage girl on foot.<\/p>\n

“He chased her, attempted to fire the pistol, and again, that pistol failed to fire,” he said.<\/p>\n

Acting Superintendent Smith said the pursuit of the girl was “absolutely abhorrent”.<\/p>\n

“I can’t think of anything worse in terms of depravity of a criminal to do that to a young woman and to put her through that,” he said.<\/p>\n

Detectives believed the man who was targeted was being tracked for several days before the hit man’s failed attempt due to links to Sydney’s Alameddine crime family.<\/p>\n

“I don’t believe [the man] thought his life was in danger to this extent,” Acting Superintendent Smith said.<\/p>\n

“Understandably, I’m not sure how you would ever get over something like this. They are understandably they are still affected by this incident, particularly the young girl.”<\/p>\n

\"NSW<\/p>\n

Police said they were investigating whether the gun had jammed, preventing shots from being fired. (ABC News: Victoria Pengilley)<\/p>\n

Police have previously said it was unable to confirm whether the gun had jammed, preventing shots from being fired.<\/p>\n

The attempted shooting caused the NSW Department of Education to heighten security at the nearby school.<\/p>\n

Man facing string of charges<\/p>\n

Strike force detectives with assistance from Raptor Squad officers, which target organised crime, arrested 19-year-old David Kulitapa during a vehicle stop in Sans Souci on Wednesday afternoon.<\/p>\n

At the same time police executed a search warrant in Cronulla to seize a knife, illicit drugs and devices.<\/p>\n

He was charged with a string of offences, including two counts of attempt to discharge loaded arms at a person with intent to murder, installing a tracking device to find an object without consent and knowingly directing the activities of a criminal group.<\/p>\n

Police will allege Mr Kulitapa orchestrated the attempted murder of the man and girl.<\/p>\n

“Importantly, we are not alleging that he was the gunman, we are alleging that he was involved in facilitating the crime,” Acting Superintendent Smith told reporters on Thursday.<\/p>\n

“We are alleging that he played an overall coordination role for this shooting.”<\/p>\n

Police are still on the hunt for the alleged gunman.<\/p>\n

Police alleged in court documents that Mr Kulitapa installed a tracking device on the 44-year-old’s ute a week prior, in the early hours of June 2.<\/p>\n

\"Acting<\/p>\n

Acting Superintendent Smith spoke of the charges on Thursday. (ABC News)<\/p>\n

Acting Superintendent Smith said detectives would investigate whether Mr Kulitapa was hired by someone offshore.<\/p>\n

“Throughout Taskforce Falcon, we certainly have seen a trend or increase in the use of young people used to commit these offences, not just the shootings, but the acts of preparation. I think the reason for that is that they’re cheap and they’re expendable.”<\/p>\n

Mr Kulitapa’s matter was heard in Sutherland Local Court on Thursday, where no application for bail was made and it was formally refused.<\/p>\n

Acting Superintendent Smith said Mr Kulitapa was known to police for unrelated offences.<\/p>\n

“This was an extremely targeted and calculated attack that occurred in a busy street, minutes before school pick-up,” he said.<\/p>\n

“This [alleged] offender showed a complete disregard for the victims and anyone in the vicinity at the time.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 19-year-old has been charged with coordinating the attempted shooting of a man and his teenage daughter at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":928522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[38294,64,63,32899,96444,495544,495546,5862,11554,44,1158,326919,670,495545,61969,12628],"class_list":["post-928521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-attempted-murder","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daughter","tag-fairfield","tag-fairfield-attempted-shooting","tag-fairfield-school-pick-up","tag-gun","tag-man","tag-news","tag-police","tag-school-pick-up","tag-sydney","tag-sydney-attempted-shooting","tag-taskforce-falcon","tag-teenager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=928521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/928522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=928521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=928521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=928521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}