Two different but related events stunned a Macau public numbed by months of gangland violence last week - and posed more starkly than ever the question: 'Is the enclave out of control?'.
The first came seven days ago with the calculated and bloody mafia-style execution of three men as they drove along the enclave's busy Avenida de Praia Grande not far from the showpiece Lisboa Hotel.
Their killers, two gunmen riding motorbikes one-handed on either side of the victims' moving car, shot nine times through the vehicle's back and front side windows in a concentrated burst of fire from two 7.62mm Chinese military-issue semi-automatic pistols.
None of the shots missed. The gunmen fled and are still at large, almost certainly in China.
Even by the standards of Macau's recent violent past, the killings were out of the ordinary, shattering a sunny afternoon and leaving stunned Sunday shoppers staring in disbelief at three corpses slumped in a crashed car.
Then, 48 hours later, came shock number two. Referring to the above attack, the enclave's embattled Secretary for Security, Brigadier Manuel Soares Monge, told a nervous population not to worry about their safety.
As the Governor, General Vasco Rocha Vieira, appealed for calm, Mr Monge assured law-abiding men, women and children that the streets were safe because the perpetrators of this and the now almost weekly string of attacks, were 'professional killers who never miss their targets'.
