Mark Bas­sant

Three men were shot ear­ly this morn­ing while sit­ting in a ca­bana out­side the Res­i­dence night­club at One Wood­brook Place in Port-of-Spain.

One of the three, iden­ti­fied as Nihk­il Luthra, died while re­ceiv­ing treat­ment at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal an hour and a half lat­er at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, af­ter be­ing shot in the head.

Busi­ness­man Eli Ha­jahlay, 51, who was al­so shot in the head, re­mains in crit­i­cal con­di­tion at the PoS­GH.

The third vic­tim, Roger Ramdeo, 34, who was shot in the stom­ach, is now in sta­ble con­di­tion.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors told Guardian Me­dia that the shoot­ing oc­curred just af­ter 2 am.

Po­lice said a lone gun­man who was sit­ting in a car walked up to the night­club wear­ing a hood­ie and a ban­dan­na around his face and climbed up in the cor­ner of the wall and opened fire on the men, who were sit­ting in­side the cor­ner ca­bana. The gun­man then ran to a near­by car and fled the scene.

With­in sec­onds of the shoot­ing, sev­er­al pa­trons who were sit­ting and stand­ing near­by scam­pered for cov­er.

An off-du­ty po­lice of­fi­cer who was in­side the club told Guardian Me­dia that he quick­ly went to the aid of the in­jured men and had them tak­en in pri­vate ve­hi­cles to the St James Med­ical Com­plex. The in­jured men were lat­er rushed to the PoS­GH for emer­gency surgery.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors are work­ing on the the­o­ry that one of the busi­ness­men was the in­tend­ed tar­get of the gun­man.

Sources said some­one who was in the night­club made a call min­utes be­fore the shoot­ing to in­form the gun­man where the tar­get was seat­ed.

Man­age­ment at Res­i­dence night­club told Guardian Me­dia this morn­ing they were sad­dened by the pass­ing of Luthra and said they were hop­ing that the oth­er vic­tims re­cov­er. The man­age­ment said they will be is­su­ing a state­ment lat­er to­day on the un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent.