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 at the Port of Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal af­ter be­ing shot in the head at least an hour and a half lat­er. Busi­ness­man Eli Ha­jahlay,51, who was al­so shot in the head re­mains in crit­i­cal con­di­tion at the Port of Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal . 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 two a.m. 

Po­lice say 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 on the cor­ner of the wall and opened fire on the men sit­ting in­side the cor­ner ca­bana be­fore flee­ing in­to the near­by car. 

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 he quick­ly came 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 Port of Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for emer­gency surgery. 

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

Sources said that 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. 

Re­porter: Mark Bas­sant