brisbane, australia —
As diners exited the restaurant onto a busy street in Ho Chi Minh City and sat at tables on the street, the gunman pulled out a gun and fired at his target from behind.
The alleged attack killed a leader of a feared Australian drug cartel and injured another, but it was yet another carnage in a gang war for control of the world’s most lucrative cocaine market.
Video from the Vietnam shooting shows Coconut Cartel operative Lorenzo Lemar, 24, staggering on the sidewalk and being dragged into a restaurant as police try to save his life. His alleged colleague lies seriously injured on the bloody tiles next to him.
Within 72 hours of the May 21 shooting, Vietnamese authorities announced that two Samoan men had been detained near the border with Cambodia and had made purported confessions paraded on state television. State media said the men, both in their 20s, claimed the attack was ordered by someone overseas. CNN has attempted to contact the attorney.
The shooting may have happened on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, but its effects were felt thousands of miles away in Sydney, Australia. Sydney has seen a surge in violence over the past 18 months as gangs battle for control of the drug trade.
Law enforcement agencies say buyers in Australia and New Zealand are paying several times more per gram for cocaine and methamphetamine than in the United States or Europe.
The potential profits prompted traffickers to transport large quantities of illegal drugs to both countries. In most cases, people cross the Pacific Ocean from South America via the Pacific Islands, a loose collection of thousands of islands and atolls.
The main sales hub is Sydney in the Australian state of New South Wales, where police say offshore operators employ criminals, including teenagers, to carry out their dirty work.
“Organized crime in New South Wales is now truly global,” NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Scott Cooke said in late May, warning that police would hunt down overseas criminals responsible for the violence.
Sydney’s western suburbs have become ground zero for turf wars, with criminal gangs shooting up rivals’ homes, torching cars and businesses, kidnapping and killing comrades and terrorizing their families.
Vince Hurley, a former New South Wales police detective and now a criminologist at Macquarie University, said Mr Lemar’s coconut cartel began retaliating with the Alameddine crime family early last year, describing the cartel as “hired muscle” that had fallen out with past employers over payments.
The group’s name seeks to flip the narrative on historical slurs against Pacific Islanders, who hail from small countries such as Fiji and Samoa.
“That name is a trophy that is planted in the faces of anyone who ever doubted them,” Hurley said. “Awareness, fear, media coverage, any act of recognition of a rival is evidence that the dismissal was wrong.”
Police say violence on Sydney’s streets is orchestrated from overseas, with teenagers being lured into complex gang wars with the promise of quick cash.
On the eve of Ms Lemar’s funeral, footage circulated on social media showing a gunman armed with a semi-automatic rifle firing 30 shots from the back of a car at the planned wake in Sydney’s west. No one was at the venue at the time, but police said it may have caused “multiple fatalities.”
The alleged gunman is just 17 years old, a sign of a disturbing trend of young people drawn into organized crime, police say.
“(This is) very concerning, not just young men, but young women as well,” NSW Police Superintendent Jason Box said earlier this month.
“We recently arrested a 17-year-old and an 18-year-old woman who were involved in a murder conspiracy and were conducting surveillance on potential armed targets. So we have a large group of young men and women who are willing to take on this serious crime.”
Police say young offenders are typically not loyal to a particular criminal network and often do not know the identity of their intended victims.
“More families need to be aware of what is happening to their children,” Box said. “Do they have unexplained wealth? Are they out at all hours of the night? Are they walking around with five or six cell phones?”
Together, Australia and New Zealand have the world’s most lucrative cocaine markets, thanks to relatively high prices per gram in stores and consumers’ insatiable appetites.
According to the latest report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released on Friday, 4.2% of people aged 15 to 64 in these countries used cocaine in 2024. This is more than double the rate in the US (1.9%) and Europe (1.7%), making it the highest rate in the world.
Traffickers primarily send shipments from the Americas along a route known as the “Pacific Drug Highway,” using Pacific islands such as Fiji and the Solomon Islands for transit to lucrative Oceanian markets.
“It’s like a balloon, you push it on one side and it flies to the other side,” said Antoine Vera, a researcher at the UNODC World Drug Report, explaining that savvy cocaine traffickers are beginning to see potential in the westbound route, which has received less attention than the traditional route to Europe.
He said: “I wouldn’t be surprised if this increases further. It’s not just cocaine but other drugs that are impacting Pacific Island countries.”
Watch the moment a “drug submarine” stuffed with cocaine is captured in an international drug raid
The Australian Federal Police says 17 tonnes of illicit drugs, mainly cocaine, have been seized in the Pacific region so far this year, more than three times the total for all of last year. Some have been found on ships or hidden in semi-submarine narco-submarines, which are difficult for surveillance systems to detect.
A customs enforcement officer with the Oceania Customs Organization said the seizure “proves that criminal organizations see our Blue Pacific as a billion-dollar shipping route.”
There is also evidence that a lot is going on. New Zealand Police say wastewater samples in New Zealand show “unusually high” levels of cocaine use and “significantly elevated” levels of meth in the final quarter of 2025. At the same time, prices for meth have fallen in New Zealand, indicating there is no shortage in the market.
“For me, the biggest problem is not drugs, as bad as it is, but the corruption that permeates society,” said Alexander Gillepsie, a professor of international law at New Zealand’s Waikato University. He pointed to the bribery of customs officials and local police to smooth the flow of drugs.
“Countries like Australia and New Zealand have some resilience to corruption, but when you get into the Pacific region, where you have not only developing countries but also least developed countries and extreme poverty, you’re much more likely to use corruption and extreme violence to get what you need to achieve.”
The arrest of two Samoan men suspected of attacking the Lemaru Coconut Cartel made headlines on the small island in the South Pacific, a developing country with about 220,000 people. After the shooting, the island’s prime minister reportedly said local youth were being “used” in the drug trade.
Emma Tufuga, a Samoan-born criminologist at Perth’s Curtin University, said young people were being recruited through peer networks and social media with the promise of money or just a sense of belonging.
“My real concern is that small countries in the Pacific could end up bearing the brunt of a drug market that is primarily driven elsewhere,” Tufuga said. “The partnership really needs to focus on prevention and protection, not just the great powers that police Pacific waters.”
Earlier this week, Australia’s federal and state police seized 2.7 tonnes of cocaine, the largest haul in the country’s history, which police said was the equivalent of 3 million street transactions.
He was buried in a plastic tub buried under three shipping containers on a rural property in Sydney’s west.
The chase that led to the record haul began in Queensland, where local police officers responded to a report of a truck fire and found 40kg of cocaine floating in the water near a boat launch. The discovery led investigators south to Sydney and more than a thousand miles to the Solomon Islands, where local law enforcement was monitoring the Belize-flagged cargo ship MV Wealth.
A government statement said police had already been monitoring the vessel for “suspicious movements” and had seized the ship and its 19 crew members after receiving information from Australian authorities.
The Australian Federal Police said it was continuing to investigate the ship’s route to the Solomon Islands, including whether it came via the Pacific Islands or followed a route further north.
In any case, police allege the shipment was ordered by a Sydney organized crime group and ferried from a Queensland port to the southern Australian city for sale. Six people were arrested.
AFP Commander Stephen Jay declined to say on Monday whether the record cocaine bust would disrupt or intensify gang-related conflicts in the city.
“Somebody lost a lot of money, I think that makes sense,” Jay said. “There will definitely be some soul-searching surrounding the loss of this significant amount, a significant amount of Australian cocaine.”
Sydney Crime News (SCN) World Star Zaky Marat says predicting underworld violence is “never easy”.
“It’s a retaliation situation,” he said in a text message. “It seems like for every arrest, there are two more shootings.”
SCN Worldstar publishes updates on Sydney’s drug war on social media, often receiving first-hand video of crimes committed on the city’s streets. Police say criminals often film their crimes as proof of the work they were paid to do or for bragging rights.
Days after Lemar’s death, New South Wales Police carried out early morning raids across Sydney, arresting nine people and expressing confidence they had organized crime under control.
“We were able to arrest not only the athletics principal and athletics co-ordinator, but also many of the contract offenders and facilitators who are supporting this organized crime network in NSW,” NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Cook said in late May.
“We’ve been playing catch-up for a long time,” Cook told reporters. “For the first time, I think we’re even.”
