A young Melbourne man said goodbye to his friends after a party, opened a garage door and was gunned down, dying in the street as his killer fled.
Two of his friends were also hit by bullets when a shooter, or shooters, fired at them through a rear garage door of the house in Keysborough on Tuesday night.
The 22-year-old man who died had been shot in the chest and was in cardiac arrest when paramedics arrived.
A 23-year-old man received a gunshot wound to the arm and a 22-year-old man was hit in the leg.
Both are in a stable condition in The Alfred hospital.
"The deceased was going home from the social gathering and he's opened up the garage door and he's been shot," Victoria Police Inspector Mark Langhorn said on Wednesday.
The shots were fired from a rear alley used by residents to access their garages in a quiet housing estate 40km southeast of the city.
A neighbour, who didn't want to be named, said she barricaded herself and her young daughter in a walk-in wardrobe as she called police.
"My daughter was upstairs sleeping. The gunshots were so loud and sharp I can still hear it," the woman told AAP.
"Police said to me to keep low and to keep away from the windows.
"So we went into my wardrobe and I had a heavy-duty torch and I've actually got a baseball bat in the house too."
There were six or seven people at the party when the shots rang out, but the three victims didn't live at the house.
Residents say they heard five or six loud bangs but police are yet to confirm how many shots were fired.
They are also yet to establish a motive for the attack and say the victims aren't known to police and are co-operating with investigators.
"The two survivors are lucky, and we will be putting a lot of extra police in here over the next few weeks," Insp Langhorn said.
The estate was built two years ago and residents say it's a quiet family neighbourhood.
"They're brand new neighbours so no one really knows them. But this is definitely not random, you can just tell," another witness, who also did not want to be named, said.
Nearby resident Angela Merchant said her family was asleep when they heard shots and then people screaming in pain.
"We just heard loud screams. We knew someone was hurt," she told the Nine Network.
Investigators are looking for a dark-coloured 4WD and a "shiny car" seen speeding away from the scene.
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