A man has been stabbed to death by a gang of machete-wielding African males outside a Melbourne shopping centre.
Victoria Police said they were called to reports of a group of men fighting at the Marriott Waters Shopping Centre in Lyndhurst at 8.30pm on Friday night, and emergency services arrived to find a 24-year-old suffering stab wounds.
The man, from Clyde was taken to hospital but could not be saved, and the attackers had fled the scene by the time police arrived.
Police later confirmed the offenders were “African males” armed with “edged weapons, including machetes”, Victoria Police Detective Inspector Adam Tilley said on Saturday afternoon.
He said the armed attackers jumped out of a white Hyundai Kona and approached the victim, who was alone in his car. An argument broke out and the man tried to drive away, Tilley said, but crashed into another vehicle and fled on foot.
Tillet said he was then chased into a nearby loading dock and stabbed to death.
“I can’t comment on the extent of his injuries, but the type of weapons involved … it would have been horrific,” he said.
Police are now looking into whether the attack was gang-related.
“When someone is harming the community, if they are affiliated to a gang or a group, there is always concern of retribution and retaliation,” he said.
“I’m not saying that this incident is linked to two gangs, but any incident that plays out in this nature involving machetes or edged weapons is a concern to us.”
Local resident Abhijeet Singh told the Herald Sun he saw a large group of 10 to 20 men gathered around a silver sedan near Crust Pizza.
“Within seconds, something had happened and they were running in every direction, all screaming the same word,” he said.
“That’s when I saw two guys running towards the Subway, one of them had a machete in his hand.”
Mr Singh said the incident made him worried about living in the suburb, which was “supposed to be a nice and quiet area”.
“It’s made me more anxious and fearful, I don’t know where else I can move,” he said.
The fatal attack comes just two days after the state banned machetes amid an African gang crime wave, including a machete attack in Footscray last month, an alleged machete murder the month before, and another the month before that.
Header image: Police at the scene (Nine News).
