A four-year-old child was in a car with his father when the 26-year-old was wounded in a Belfast shooting last night.
The child was sitting in the rear seat of the car when two men on a motorbike opened fire on his father in Ravenscroft Avenue, off the Newtownards Road, east Belfast.
The shooting came 24 hours after Geoffrey Thomas Gray (41) was killed in Ravenhill Avenue, in the south-east of the city.
Police blame that attack on internal tensions within loyalism.
At the same time, police arrested east Belfast Ulster Defence Association (UDA) commander Mr Jim Gray and other members of the loyalist organisation in a Chinese restaurant as a pipe bomb was discovered during a raid on the Bunch of Grapes pub in the east of the city.
Mr Gray, who was released without charge last night, has been at the centre of a bitter feud between elements in the UDA and Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) over the past month.
The feud flared last month when LVF member Stephen Warnock was gunned down outside a school in Newtownards, Co Down.
Days later, Mr Gray was shot in the facein east Belfast.
Last month, the UDA expelled prominent loyalist Mr Johnny Adair and his spokesman, Mr John White, for allegedly siding with LVF elements.
Mr Gray, who was being questioned today in Lisburn police station, is the second UDA commander to have been arrested during the feud.
Over a fortnight ago, the UDA's north Belfast leader, Mr Andre Shoukri, was arrested and charged with possessing a firearm.
The latest developments within loyalism were condemned last night by Ulster Unionist councillor Mr Jim Rodgers.
He described the gun attack on the 26-year-old as "absolutely appalling" and appealed to the rival factions to pull back from violence.
Meanwhile police said last night that three of their vehicles had been hit by loyalist gunfire when they went to investigated a reported disturbance at Westland Road