Police have acknowledged the “challenge” of combatting domestic violence as shocking details emerge about a spate of shootings in Sydney’s west.

One man is dead and another is in hospital after the twin shootings just streets apart in Sydney’s west overnight on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, NSW Police south-west metropolitan region commander Brett McFadden said the string of incidents that sparked a manhunt started when an “enraged” man from Victoria went to the Auburn home where his wife and children was living with her parents.

“The male became enraged and smashed the front window of the premises and forced open the front door but did not enter the premises,” he said.

“He removed a handgun and pointed it at the male aged in his 70s, being the father of the victim inside. He fired the firearm and it did not operate. He then turned the gun towards the woman aged in her 70s, and the shot was discharged inside the premises and did not hit anyone inside and the male left.”

McFadden said the man’s estranged wife, aged in her 50s, and her children, aged 15 and 20, had taken refuge with her parents as part of a planned separation.

“[We are] very thankful at this stage that we don’t have another DV-related homicide in our hands,” he said.

The man then fled. About 10 minutes later, he attempted to carjack a man in 50s, who had his 15-year-old daughter in the front passenger seat of his vehicle. He fired a shot, hitting the driver in his shoulder and face.

The driver was taken to Westmead Hospital, where he remains in a serious but stable condition.

His car was found in a nearby park, with the body of the 50-year-old Victorian man found on the banks of a creek soon after.

Later on Wednesday, a family member sweeping up broken glass at the front of the Auburn home said they were “broken” but doing OK after the previous night’s violent invasion.

“It was a miracle [no one was hurt when he shot into the house],” she told the Daily Mail.

“I thought I had almost lost my entire family.”

McFadden said the Victorian man had a record in NSW dating back to the 1990s.

“There is nothing of any substance since that time that would cause a concern. Victoria have no active interactions with him for 10 years,” he said.

“I want to really reinforce, I’m very thankful that we can provide support to this family, and we’re not looking at something that’s more horrific.”

But McFadden said working out what triggered such violence was what really brought “that sense of challenge and risk to the community and to the families that we are trying to protect”.

The Auburn incident came as Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner Micaela Cronin released the first annual report tracking the progress of the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032 on Wednesday.

“In the last financial year, 43 women were murdered in intimate partner violence. The numbers are much larger than that if you start to include people, women, children and children who die as a result of family domestic and sexual violence,” she said.

“It’s not something that many people want to look in the face all the time. It is something that advocates are courageously and bravely bringing to our attention so that we can do something about this.”

Cronin met more than 300 organisations and people in 2024, as services struggle to keep up with demand despite government funding.

“One of the things I have consistently heard from nearly every advocate I have met with is an urgent passion to tell me about their experience, to share with us, because they don’t want anybody else to experience what they have,” she said.

“They’re talking about our system’s failures, predominantly. They’re not coming to say, ‘I want you to help me, and fix what happened to me’. They want to change the future for other people. They want to change the presence for other people.”

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