Police have now charged a 25-year-old man and 15-year-old boy with shooting with intent to murder and participating in a criminal group over the alleged shooting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will allege in court that the 25-year-old man was the person who did the shooting while the 15-year-old was the person who drove the getaway car,\u201d NSW Police Detective Acting Superintendent Brad Abdy told reporters on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Police have charged a 25-year-old with shooting with intent to murder. Photo \/ Supplied \/ NSW Police<\/p>\n
The adult was further charged with possessing a prohibited drug.<\/p>\n
The accused were both refused bail and were due to front court on Saturday morning.<\/p>\n
NSW Police Superintendent Rodney Hart previously said Utai was found writhing on the front lawn in \u201ca fair amount of pain\u201d and underwent surgery for his injuries.<\/p>\n
Utai is stable and has managed to speak with police, Abdy said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s still in a stable condition in hospital, still undergoing treatment,\u201d Abdy said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve spoken to him briefly but obviously his medical treatment is the priority at this stage and we look forward to speaking to him in the coming days.\u201d<\/p>\n
The breakthrough charges follow the arrests of four people, aged 16 to 19, on Thursday who all remain before the courts over their alleged involvement in a spate of incidents believed to be targeting Utai\u2019s family.<\/p>\n
This includes the firing of shots into a Menzies Circuit home in St Clair on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n
A woman in her 50s, who was home at the time, was uninjured.<\/p>\n
A car was found alight on Freeman St in Colyton shortly afterwards.<\/p>\n
Hours later a house and car were found on fire on Hunt St in Guildford West<\/p>\n
No injuries were reported.<\/p>\n
A strike force was established to investigate the alleged incidents, which a NSW Police spokesperson said are \u201cbelieved to have been targeting the same family\u201d.<\/p>\n
Abdy said footage taken by the accused men as they carried out the alleged incidents had not helped the investigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose particular images haven\u2019t been of great assistance,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOrdinarily, criminals like to have a degree of anonymity when they\u2019re committing crimes, and now they seem to want to be Facebook or other social media influencers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police are investigating whether any of the alleged offenders have links to organised crime or offshore entities.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very concerning, it\u2019s quite disgusting to be honest that criminals who are overseas are now recruiting young people into Australia and essentially consigning them to a particular lifestyle while they remain offshore,\u201d Abdy said, speaking generally.<\/p>\n
There are at least two other people police believe were involved in the shots fired at St Claire and the firebombing in Guildford.<\/p>\n
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor\u2019s Picks<\/a>, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week\u2019s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police have now charged a 25-year-old man and 15-year-old boy with shooting with intent to murder and participating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[162786,74,1554,95,806,34263,13239,162785,18791,2740,1345,101,424,30506,111,43,139,69,14727,1523,7819,2737,1734,11230,4054,1361,160593,3457],"class_list":{"0":"post-294901","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-15yo","9":"tag-after","10":"tag-alleged","11":"tag-and","12":"tag-as","13":"tag-awake","14":"tag-charged","15":"tag-exnrl","16":"tag-fighting","17":"tag-former","18":"tag-home","19":"tag-left","20":"tag-life","21":"tag-matt","22":"tag-new-zealand","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-newzealand","25":"tag-nz","26":"tag-outside","27":"tag-over","28":"tag-shooting","29":"tag-star","30":"tag-sydney","31":"tag-talking","32":"tag-teenager","33":"tag-that","34":"tag-utai","35":"tag-western"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}