Drug dealer blasted buyer to death with a shotgun over $1500 debt in Tregear, NSW

A drug dealer chasing a $1500 debt may have been hypervigilant when he fatally shot a buyer twice with a double-barrelled shotgun during a botched home invasion, a court has been told.

Bahra Youseff killed 30-year-old Adnan Salameh by shooting him in his right thigh and shoulder in front of his partner in their granny flat in the western Sydney suburb of Tregear on November 30, 2020.

The dealer, who was chasing money owed for $1500 worth of cocaine bought on credit six weeks earlier, broke into the couple’s home with another man and fired when a drug-affected Mr Salameh lunged at them.

The 23-year-old, who worked in the electrical industry and as a removalist, was found guilty of murder by a NSW Supreme Court jury in October.

Jurors found beyond reasonable doubt that Youseff had either intended to kill or commit grievous bodily harm on Mr Salameh.

But at a sentence hearing on Friday, his barrister John Stratton SC urged Justice Sarah McNaughton to find there was no intent to kill.

“The actions of someone intending to shoot to kill would be to shoot at the head or the centre of the person, not areas where the deceased was shot,” he told the court.

If the goal was actually to kill, Youseff and his accomplice would have remained at the scene to get the $1500 owed, Mr Stratton said.

Instead, they immediately fled with the 23-year-old then texting an associate to delete everything from their phone.

“You don’t know me, don’t contact me again,” he wrote.

All this pointed to a “robbery gone wrong”, Mr Stratton argued.

Crown prosecutor Sylvie Sloan disagreed.

“The discharge twice of the shotgun at close proximity brought with it really an inevitability of occasioning death,” she said.

The court was told Youseff still experienced signs of mental illness after experiencing violence and abuse in his past.

His psychologist Sam Albassit told the court the 23-year-old showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, generalised anxiety and substance abuse disorder.

The PTSD in particular meant he could have been experiencing “hypervigilance” at the time of the murder leading him to fire upon the approaching Mr Salameh, Mr Stratton said.

The court was told Youssef had been convicted of intimidation in 2020 and then possessing a prohibited drug the following year.

In 2023, he was convicted of aggravated breaking and entering with intent to cause intimidation but avoided jail after a court found he remained outside in a car while two other men entered the property.

Mr Stratton argued it was only a limited criminal history because his client had not been incarcerated until he was arrested for murder in August 2022.

During the hearing, Youseff sat in the dock supported by his mother and sisters who watched from the court’s public gallery.

He will be sentenced on February 28.

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