Macchour Chaouk, the head of a Melbourne crime family, has reportedly been shot dead.
Police have confirmed a 65-year-old man has suffered possible gun shot wounds at a house in Brooklyn in Melbourne's west. The area around the house has been cordoned off, and a suspect has not been found.
The Chaouk family has been involved in a gang war with rival crime families, the Haddaras.
Their family home in Geelong Rd was raided in July by police who seized guns, ammunition and blank passports and arrested Mr Chaouk and his sons Omar and Waleed.
Mr Chaouk and Waleed were released but Omar, 18, was charged with weapons, drugs and fraud offences.
The house was raided after a drive-by shooting in June in nearby Altona, in which Sam Haddara, 18, was shot in the face while sitting in a car.
Sam is a cousin of Mohamed Haddara, who was killed a year earlier in a drive-by shooting, and there have been a series of alleged tit-for-tat violent incidents between the families.
During his bail hearing last month, Omar Chaouk's lawyer Alan Swanwick had argued his client should be released because he was needed to help protect his family.
Magistrate Fiona Stewart said at the time that was precisely why he should not be released on bail.
"I'm gravely concerned about Mr Swanwick's submission that he (Chaouk) is needed to help his family, which is under siege," she told the court.
"There is an ongoing war between two families and the court should be extremely worried about the danger posed to the community by it."
The Chaouk family's hostility towards police goes back to the fatal shooting of another son, Mohamed Chaouk, by a police officer during a raid at the same home in 2005.
- AAP
