Man killed in drive-by shooting outside Australian nightclub

By Bianca Britton, CNN

Posted at 1312 GMT (2112 HKT) April 14, 2019

Firefighters wash away bloodstains at the scene of a deadly shooting in Melbourne, Australia.

(CNN) — A security guard was killed and five others were wounded in an apparent drive-by shooting incident outside an Australian nightclub in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Victoria Police say a 37-year-old man was critically injured in the incident in Melbourne's Prahran district at around 3:10 a.m. local time; he was taken to hospital, but later died.

"Three of the people struck were employees, security guards at the nightclub, and one person was a patron just waiting, innocently, to get in," Detective Inspector Andrew Stamper told reporters.

Love Machine nightclub

Police say a 28-year-old man remains in critical condition; three other men, aged 26, 29 and 50, suffered non-life threatening injuries in the incident.

A 20-year-old woman was also taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Police believe she fell and hit her head at the scene after the shots rang out.

Police have not yet made any arrests over the shooting. They are investigating whether a black Porsche SUV, later found burnt out in Wollert, approximately 18 miles north of the nightclub, is connected to the incident.

"An investigation is underway and the exact circumstances are still being established," police said in a statement.

Shootings are rare in Australia, which introducedtight gun control measures after a 1996 massacre at Port Arthur, a popular tourist spot in Tasmania, in which 35 people were shot dead by a lone gunman armed with a military-style semiautomatic rifle.

Australia's then-Prime Minister, John Howard, banned rapid-fire rifles and shotguns, and tightened gun licensing regulations. More than a million firearms were collected and destroyed.

The nation saw its worst mass shooting since Port Arthur last year, when seven people, including four children, were killed in a murder-suicide near Margaret River in Western Australia.