Police are hunting for two Asian males after a young African man was stabbed to death at a bus stop in Melbourne’s south-west.
Nathan Mwanza, 23, was punched, kicked and stabbed by two men after a confrontation on a bus spilled onto the street in Wyndham Vale at about 8pm on Wednesday night.
A passerby saw Mr Mwanza injured and called an ambulance, but he could not be saved and died at the scene, 7 News reported.
His killers fled the scene on foot and remain on the run, and on Thursday Victoria Police said they are described as being Asian in appearance and aged in their late teens to early 20s.
Both were wearing caps, while one was wearing a white T-shirt, dark jeans and runners, and the other was wearing a dark jacket.
Detective Inspector Dean Thomas described the attack as “brutal” and said Mr Mwanza, an emerging model who appeared in campaigns for Nike and Champion, was not known to police.
“He was on the bus minding his own business,” he said.
He said it was unclear whether Mr Mwanza knew his attackers, who he described as “dangerous given they’ve shown their propensity to commit this type of crime”.
CCTV footage showed a fight break out on the near-empty bus before the trio got off at Haines Drive, The Herald Sun reported.
One of Mr Mwanza’s attackers then drew a large blade and plunged it into him a number of times. The bus driver then drove away instead of rendering assistance.
The victim’s sister Naomi said he was “not a troublemaker” and “would not hurt a fly”, while other family members described him as a “gentle giant”.
Mr Mwanza, from Werribee, was the second oldest of six children, and his family moved to Australia from the Democratic Republic of Congo 10 years ago.
The savage killing unfolded just 500 metres away from where another African man, Lino Atem, was brutally hacked to death by four carloads of machete-wielding men last month.
Mr Atem’s brother, Atem Atem, 29, was shot dead alongside another African man Ayuel Akuei, 22, in the driveway of the family’s nearby home in February 2023, and a third man, 23, was shot in the chest and survived.
In December two African men were charged over the alleged murder of a Burmese teenager in a gang attack, in November Africans vowed to take revenge after a Sudanese rapper was shot dead, and in July four African gang members were sentenced over the brutal murder of White Australian boy Declan Cutler who died of 86 stab wounds.
Header image: Left, Nathan Mwanza (Instagram). Right, police at the scene (7 News).
