Two members of the Bethel Town Seventh-day Adventist Church in Westmoreland, Jamaica were shot on February 7 while leaving a meeting at the church.

“Junior McKenzie was helping to direct Corporal Peter Salkey as he backed out on to the road when a man came up to the window and shot Salkey,” Pastor Glen O. Samuels, president of the Adventist Church in Western Jamaica, told Adventist News Network.

“While Mckenzie was approaching the first gunman, another came up and shot him in the back,” Samuels continued.

Salkey was shot twice, once in the chest and a second time in which the bullet entered his side and exited the other.

“He wasn’t in any police uniform, so we are assuming it might have been the car that they wanted to steal,” Samuels said. Samuels visited both men in the hospital over the weekend. He said McKenzie came through surgery well. However, Salkey, while alert, remains in the intensive care unit.

The men had just finished a planning meeting on how to reach out to men in the community. Just three weeks ago Salkey was ordained an elder of the church.

Samuels said the police are holding two persons in custody but wouldn’t release any names.