Lawyer Ho Ledinh was shot dead on Tuesday afternoon while sitting in a café in Bankstown, Sydney. Police have said that they believe it was a targeted attack.
"We're confident the shooting was targeted," Detective Superintendent Cook said.
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"He has a lot of clients who are engaged in organised crime and other offences, so that is absolutely a line of inquiry in terms of his business."
He added: "The man responsible for the shooting is still at large, armed with a weapon," and urged the gunman to come forward before he is hunted down.
Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, Huu Chi Nguyen - who had been good friends with Ledinh for decades and was with him at the time of the shooting - explained that he didn't get a good look at his friend's killer.
"I saw the man running away and I looked back at Mr Ho," he said.
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"Mr Ho stands up, walked about one or two steps and lost his balance and he fell on the floor. I didn't see the bleeding at all, but when he fell ... I held one hand under his back and one hand [into] his side. I cry and hold him and I see he's dying."
Nguyen then explained that he was asked to lie his friend down on the ground, before a woman started performing emergency compressions on his chest while he performed CPR.
"She did it on his chest while I tried to blow air into his mouth," he said.
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Mr Nguyen, who runs 'anti-communist' news website Saigontimes.org news, had been friends with Mr Ledinh for at least two decades, and Nguyen's partner had even said he was 'like a brother'. Ledinh was also his legal advisor.
When asked what he thought the motive could be, Mr Nguyen said it was 'very hard to say', but that he did have a few theories - his first being that as Mr Ledinh was a 'very good criminal lawyer', he may have also had criminal enemies.
"But that is not the big one. I believe the big one is politics. That is the second theory," Mr Nguyen continued.
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"My newspaper [is run] by two men... myself and Ho. He is my legal advisor for twenty years or more. My newspaper [is] anti-communist ... Always. There is a communist spy network in Australia - they hate us and they hate him."
He added that they had been devoted to fighting communists 'inside' Australia.
Featured Image Credit: 9 NewsTopics: World News, Australia News