Woman kidnapped, child bashed, before body found in burnt-out car (2025)

Masked invaders have broken into a home, assaulted a young child with a baseball bat, and forced a woman into a car at gunpoint before a body, believed to be hers, was found in a burning car kilometres away in Sydney’s south-west.

Police were called to Welfare Avenue North in Beverly Hills just before 11.30pm on Thursday, following reports that a car was on fire. Once on the scene, authorities recovered a body in the back seat.

The body is yet to be identified, but police believe it is that of a 45-year-old woman abducted at gunpoint in the neighbouring suburb of Bankstown.

Investigators have been told a group of masked men broke into a family home in Bankstown at 10.30pm.

The kidnappers were armed with a gun and assaulted an eight-year-old boy with a baseball bat before forcing the woman into a waiting SUV.

Police and paramedics raced to the scene and took the child, and a second boy aged 15, to hospital for treatment and assessment.

An hour later, they were called to the blazing car on Welfare Avenue, which is about a 10-minute drive from the home.

It is not yet confirmed if the body in the car is that of the woman or how the person in the car died.

Police have cordoned off all entrances to the Beverly Hills street, including the nearby nature reserve, as forensic officers assess the burnt-out car.

Firefighters were also called to the scene and extinguished the blaze, but couldn’t stop the vehicle from being destroyed.

It took one truck of firefighters about 20 minutes to extinguish the fire, after which they discovered a body in the back seat of the car. Vision from the scene shows the front exterior burnt off and a burst windshield.

Superintendent Adam Dewberry from Fire and Rescue NSW said firefighters responded to several triple zero calls and found the car burning “extraordinarily hot and fast” in a fire that had expanded onto the nearby nature reserve and took 40 minutes to extinguish.

“Once the fire was extinguished and the steam and the smoke had disappeared, it was a pretty grizzly sight for our firefighters,” he said.

Dewberry said that while firefighters attend to thousands of burnt-out and abandoned cars a year, it was “extremely rare to find a body inside a car burnt out on the side of the street”.

“We all take a little bit of these things with you; some of it we forget about and others come back when you don’t expect it, but we have excellent support systems in place”.

He said it was not clear how the “extremely hot, intense and rapid” fire started but it would not have been alight for long before crews arrived.

Welfare Avenue North is a dead-end residential street in Beverly Hills, adjacent to the M5 East motorway. The car was found at the end of the street, closest to the M5.

A crime scene has been established, with investigations to determine the circumstances leading to the fatal car fire under way.

Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

More to come

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