Busi­ness­man Eli Ha­jahlay, 51, who was one of three men shot at the Res­i­dence night­club in One Wood­brook Place in Port-of-Spain ear­ly Sat­ur­day morn­ing, re­mains in crit­i­cal con­di­tion at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors told Guardian Me­dia that Ha­jahlay un­der­went emer­gency surgery for sev­er­al hours af­ter be­ing shot in the head and is now be­ing treat­ed in the In­ten­sive Care Unit (ICU) in a se­ri­ous but sta­ble con­di­tion.

Homi­cide sources dis­missed so­cial me­dia re­ports post­ed by a for­mer po­lice of­fi­cer that Ha­jahlay had passed away late Sun­day night.

One of Ha­jahlay’s friends, who did not want to be named, said, “I just left the hos­pi­tal and Eli is ful­ly alive and do­ing bet­ter again to­day. Stop lis­ten­ing to so­cial me­dia and the news, it is wrong, our broth­er is alive and do­ing well, keep­ing pray­ing and give him all the pos­i­tive en­er­gy, we need it.”

Ha­jahlay, along with 34-year-old Nikhil Luthra, was shot in the head and Roger Ramdeo, 34, was shot in the stom­ach, af­ter a masked gun­man opened fire on the trio while they sat in one of the night­club’s ca­banas sit­u­at­ed out­side the club.

Luthra died with­in hours of be­ing shot at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Po­lice said the 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 a cor­ner 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.

Homi­cide de­tec­tives have since ob­tained CCTV footage from one of the cam­eras mount­ed on an elec­tri­cal pole near­by show­ing the brazen shoot­ing and the get­away made by the gun­man and his ac­com­plices in a white Toy­ota Axio mo­tor­car bear­ing false num­ber plates.

Se­nior po­lice sources said they be­lieve it was a hit but are still un­able to in­di­cate which of the men was the in­tend­ed tar­get and are ex­plor­ing sev­er­al the­o­ries.

They are al­so look­ing for a per­son who was in­side the night­club, who they sus­pect tipped off the gun­man as to the in­tend­ed tar­get and their lo­ca­tion.

Luthra’s moth­er made an im­pas­sioned plea to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Sat­ur­day to do some­thing about crime and save the youths be­fore it’s too late. She made the call while speak­ing with an­oth­er me­dia house.