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Two Mongolian cyclists who were waiting for Melbourne greengrocer Paul Virgona before shooting him while driving to work are guilty of his murder.
Josh Rider and Aaron Ong were charged with murdering the father of two while driving on the EastLink Freeway in Donvale on November 9, 2019.
It can now be revealed while Rider secretly pleaded guilty to murder last month, Ong fought the charge in Victoria’s Supreme Court.
On Monday, a jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict against Ong, setting him up for a significantly longer jail sentence than his bicycling partner.
Mr. Virgona received seven bullets from a semi-automatic pistol.
The 46-year-old man died of blood loss at the scene.
Josh Rider (left) and Aaron Ong (right) are charged with murdering the 46-year-old father of two while driving on the EastLink Freeway in Donvale on November 9, 2019.
Rider and Ong drove a stolen Mercedes to Mr Virgona’s Croydon home and waited until he left for a market in Epping at around 2am.
They were accused of following him on the freeway, pulling up next to him, and opening fire on the van.
Mr. Virgona was found dead in the driver’s seat with his seat belt on and the engine running.
His killers then dumped the Mercedes in a Mooroolbark paddock and used a 10-litre fuel container to set it on fire.
It is understood that Mr. Virgona had been the victim of an identity mistake.
Mr. Virgona (pictured) was found dead in the driver’s seat with his seatbelt on and the engine running.
At trial, the men drove away in another stolen car, sometimes driving up to 150 km/h, before losing control of that vehicle in Bayswater and running into a park.
The court was told that they threw the keys to the Mercedes on the road. Later, a member of the public found the keys and handed them over to the police.
Rider, now 31, and Ong, 36, were arrested on January 22, 2020.
The court was told that they attended the Mongols clubhouse the night before the shooting and drove two stolen cars to Mooroolbark around midnight.
Ong had been defended by attorney Mark Gumbleton, who tried to convince the jury that his client was not the other man in the car.
He had been linked to the murder by two bags of clothing that one of the killers threw while the police were chasing him.
The clothes on one belonged to Ong.
“The evidence is really good that (Rider) was one of the two criminals,” Dr. Gumbleton told the jury.
‘This is how I intend to wrap it up… that one of the two was Rider, but I couldn’t be satisfied that Ong was the other guy.’
The vehicle Paul Virgona was in when he was attacked by Ong and Rider.
Josh Rider after his arrest in 2020
Prosecutor Mark Gibson alleged that Rider and Ong had been together at the club’s premises in Port Melbourne in the hours before the shooting.
The jury heard that the two men watched Virgona’s Croydon home for two hours before following him as he left for work, bound for the Epping markets, at around 2am.
“There was nothing in Mr. Virgona’s background to explain why he was targeted and killed,” Gibson said.
Prosecutors were also unable to say if it was Ong or Rider who fired the fatal shots.
“One was driving and the other was shooting,” Gibson told the jury.
The case for the prosecution was that each was complicit in the murder of Mr. Virgona, having the joint intent to kill or seriously injure him.
Dr. Gumbleton did not dispute that there were two men in the car, or that Ong and Rider were associated.
“But the criminal justice system is not based on guilt by association,” he said.
Our defense is that Ong was neither of the two people in the Mercedes at the time the gun was fired.
The court heard that after the shooting, Ong and Rider returned to a Mooroolbark property where they had stored a getaway car.
Police tried to intercept that vehicle about an hour after the shooting and they were led on a high-speed chase.
Two people fled the vehicle towards Bayswater Park after hitting a give way sign.
The weapon used to kill Mr. Virgona has never been found.
Ong will face a pre-sentence hearing in March.