A mother who was kidnapped and found dead in a burnt-out ‘kill car’ was innocent executed by a gang seeking revenge for an underworld drug heist, detectives believe.
Thi Kim Tran was at her Bankstown home, in Sydney’s south-west, with her two sons when a group of up to five armed men forced their way inside on Thursday night.
The intruders – dressed in black with their faces masked – smashed Ms Tran’s eight-year-old son in the head with a baseball bat, before turning on his 15-year-old brother.
Ms Tran was then forced from the home at gunpoint and into a waiting black SUV, which sped off while some of the gang members trailed behind in a white sedan.
Her abduction was reported to officers at Bankstown Police Station about 10.30pm.
Emergency services were called to Welfare Avenue in the neighbouring suburb of Beverly Hills about 6km away an hour later amid reports a dark SUV had been torched in the street.
After extinguishing the blaze, authorities discovered Ms Tran’s remains inside the wreckage.
Police have managed to contact Ms Tran’s husband, who had been away on business interstate, and he is understood to have since reunited with their sons in hospital.
CCTV footage (pictured) showed the terrifying moment a group of five dragged Sydney mother-of-two Thi Kim Tran from her suburban home at gunpoint
Their youngest boy had been so badly injured in the ordeal he was placed in an induced coma, and has since undergone surgery.
Although he remains in intensive care with serious head trauma, he is now in a stable condition.
A manhunt is underway for Ms Tran’s killers – as well as whoever ordered it.
There is no suggestion Ms Tran was involved in any criminality – or that her husband was in any way involved in her abduction or execution, nor the reasons behind it.
However, detectives believe it was a targeted hit and suspect Ms Tran was marked for death after someone close to her ripped off a drug-manufacturing gang.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported detectives had already managed to trace the torched car and discovered it had been reported stolen from inner Sydney earlier this year.
Investigators believe the car had been stolen by a gang of thieves that provides vehicles known as ‘kill cars’ to be used in underworld drive-by shootings and executions.
Bankstown Area Command chief Superintendent Rodney Hart said he was horrified by the extreme violence used in the execution.
Ms Tran’s body was later found in the burned out wreckage of a car about 6km away
‘This crime is horrendous. The level of violence is unheard of but I want to reassure the community that we strongly believe that this is a targeted incident and that this is not a random kidnapping,’ Superintendent Hart said.
‘The two children are our main focus. Their welfare and their security is paramount to us.
‘I can only imagine what these children went through, seeing their mother dragged out of their home, forced into the back of a car, for an eight-year-old and a 15-year-old, what that will do to them, I can only imagine.’
Neighbours have told reporters they had heard a woman’s scream that night and described the woman as friendly.
A neighbour who lives with her family in a granny flat behind the deceased woman’s house arrived back about 4pm the following day not knowing what had occurred.
She had been home during the kidnapping but heard nothing unusual.
‘When I go out this morning there was police here,’ she told Daily Mail Australia.
‘I asked the police but they didn’t tell me anything,’ the neighbour said.
She said she had lived at her place for about two years and the dead woman and her family had been in their house when she moved in.
Detectives believe Ms Tran was murdered in a targeted execution over a gangland drug heist
She last saw the woman a few days ago but had not seen her husband for about a month.
‘Sometimes I just say hi,’ she said. ‘They have two boys. Her kids are always inside. They do not play with my girls.
‘I’m a bit scared because I live in the backyard of her house. I feel sad for her and for her children.’
A neighbour told 7News they saw a group of men wearing hoodies, who they heard speaking Arabic, hanging around on the corner from about 7.30pm, while another described hearing screaming as the ordeal unfolded.
‘We heard screaming and banging for around a minute,’ the neighbour said.
‘It was like ‘ahh!!’ — not ‘help me’. By the time I went outside, the cops were already there. Just minutes later.
‘If she had of said ‘help me’ we would have done something. But it was just ‘ah’. We thought it was someone killing a cockroach or something.’
Crime scenes have been set up at the scenes in Bankstown and Beverly Hills and police were investigating CCTV from the area..
