A 13-year-old boy has been charged with murder after a man was stabbed to death in Sydney’s west on Friday.

Emergency services were called to the suburb of Mount Druitt on Friday evening amid reports a man had been assaulted.

Police found the man, 36, with stab wounds to his torso. Paramedics assisted the man but he died at the scene.

The 13-year-old was arrested on Sunday at Mount Druitt police station and charged with murder, breach of bail and an unrelated offence of robbery.

Police said Monday the boy was known to them and an investigator recognised him on CCTV footage from the incident.

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A second boy, 16, was arrested at a home in Cabramatta later on Sunday evening. He was charged with being accessory after the fact to murder.

“In my 30-year career of policing, I find this absolutely senseless,” Supt Darrin Batchelor told reporters on Monday.

Batchelor said initial investigations suggested the altercation stemmed from a “chance meeting that was totally innocent”.

He said the man was on his way home from work and stopped to speak to a group of young people he knew through family and friends.

The man later went to an ATM to withdraw money so the young people “could head home that night”.

“Another group of young people took offence to that conversation … and as a result of that we now stand here today with that 36-year-old male … now [allegedly] murdered,” Batchelor said.

“Here you have an individual … on his way home from work, purely stopped to talk to friends that he knew, and this [second] group took offence to that and allegedly stabbed him twice.”

Officials encouraged anyone with information, including CCTV or dashcam footage, to come forward, saying inquiries continued.

Supt Brendan Gorman told reporters over the weekend detectives were looking into the alleged murder, saying there were about “a dozen people” in the area at the time of the stabbing. Police said Monday they knew of at least two others allegedly involved in the incident, and encouraged them to turn themselves in.

A knife allegedly used in the stabbing was recovered in a drain outside a unit block in Cabramatta.

Both boys were refused bail to appear before a children’s court on Monday.

• This article’s subheading was amended on 12 October 2026. An earlier version incorrectly stated the victim’s age as 30, rather than 36.