By Simone Fox Koob, The Age
Two men wanted over the brutal shooting of a Sydney real estate agent in Point Cook are thought to have fled the state and are in the NSW coastal town of Byron Bay.
Homicide squad detectives in Victoria have issued warrants for Mark Dixon, a 30-year-old who also uses the surname Murphy, and Jack Harvey, 26, who both are described as having Irish accents.
The pair are believed to be in the Byron Bay area, with police keen to speak to the men over a shooting in Point Cook in Melbourne’s west last week.
Sid Morgan, a 53-year-old former detective, was shot in the face at a home in Spraypoint Drive about 11pm on Thursday.
He was taken to Royal Melbourne Hospital in a critical condition.
He remained in hospital with life-threatening injuries on Tuesday, five days after being shot.
On Saturday, police arrested a 29-year-old Point Cook man in the country town of Nagambie, more than 150 kilometres north of the crime scene. They also arrested a 30-year-old man in Point Cook on Saturday morning.
However, the two men were released a day later without charge.
Investigators are now keen to speak to Mr Dixon and Mr Harvey.
Mr Morgan, who previously went by the name of Said, was a detective in NSW police force in the 1990s.
In 1995, he became aware of allegations that his brother-in-law, Mansour Suha, had been molesting three young girls, two of them his young relatives. He then shot Mr Suha in May, 1995 at a home in Sydney’s Oakhurst.
In an action described in court as a “Clint Eastwood notion of justice”, Mr Morgan emptied his service revolver, shooting the man six times.
“It was bang, bang and then he kept coming forward and bang, bang; before I realised it, the fifth or sixth shot was fired,” Mr Morgan told the court.
On August 1, 1997, a jury rejected the Crown argument that it was a revenge shooting, finding Mr Morgan instead acted out of fear for the girls’ safety.
A jury took 33 minutes to decide his actions were justified. Public debate erupted over the implications of vigilante-style justice.
He was refused reinstatement into the NSW police force.
After the trial, he reinvented himself as a Sydney real-estate agent. Ten years after the shooting, in 2005, he told the Sydney Morning Herald he had “worked hard and built a new life” for himself.
“But I’ve only achieved that by learning to leave the past in the past,” he said.
Most recently, Mr Morgan was running Morgans real estate agency and billing himself as “without doubt the Hills number one agent” with a “never say die attitude”.
Investigators are now keen to speak to Mr Dixon and Mr Harvey in relation to his shooting.
Mr Dixon is described as 180 centimetres tall, with a medium build, short brown hair, a fair complexion and speaks with an Irish accent.
Mr Harvey is described as having a slim build, short brown hair, a goatee beard and also speaks with an Irish accent.
Anyone who sees Dixon or Harvey is urged not to approach them and to call triple zero.
Anyone with information on their whereabouts is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or submit a confidential report at www.crimestoppersvic.com.au
