Rabii Abram Zahabe: Second man charged with murder after brazen daylight shooting of Melbourne underworld boss Gavin ‘Capable’ Preston in busy cafe

A second man will be extradited to Melbourne for the execution-style shooting death of gangster member Gavin ‘Capable’ Preston at a suburban cafe.

Police arrested Rabii Abram Zahabe, 24, on unrelated charges while he was in Sydney’s CBD on Wednesday.

Detectives from Victoria Police’s homicide squad then traveled to New South Wales and charged him with murder, months after Preston was shot dead in September 2023.

Zahabe, from Yagoona, in Sydney’s southwest, appeared at Bathurst Local Court on Thursday afternoon, where police successfully applied for his extradition to Victoria.

He was expected to arrive in Melbourne around midday on Friday before appearing in the Melbourne Magistrates Court.

On 25 October 2023, another man, Jaeden Tito, was arrested at his home in Bradbury, south-west Sydney, and charged with murder over the fatal Preston shooting.

The 23-year-old, who was not known to police before the shooting, was taken to Melbourne to face further charges.

Preston, 50, was killed and a 26-year-old South Morang man he was dining with was seriously injured after shots were fired outside the Sweet Lulus cafe in Keilor Village, in Melbourne’s northwest, on September 9 .

Security camera footage showed a hooded gunman dressed in black running from the passenger side door of a black pickup truck and firing several shots from a handgun at Preston, who fell to the ground.

Preston died at the scene. The other man underwent emergency surgery for gunshot wounds to the stomach.

The injured victim began to flee after seeing the gunman approaching, while other diners fled and fell to the ground as gunshots were heard.

No one else was injured in the accident.

Preston was released from Barwon Prison in February after serving 11 years for defensive manslaughter for the 2012 fatal shooting of Adam Khoury, 41, a Melbourne ice merchant.

He suffered nine stab wounds, several cuts to his face and head and a 15cm cut to his right jaw during an attack in the exercise yard of the maximum security prison in 2014.