KALAMAZOO, MI --

John Bolenbaugh was playing poker at the Wayside West sports bar on the city's west side early Thursday morning when he heard loud popping sounds that he thought was firecrackers.

Bolenbaugh then saw a man run from the bar area to the poker room, looking scared, and it didn't take him long to realize it was something much more serious.

"He had a really surprised look on his face," Bolenbaugh said of the fleeing man. "Then the shooting started."

Another man came into the poker room, fired shots from a handgun, and the victim hit the floor. The shooter then emptied the clip on the victim, firing what Bolenbaugh estimated was seven to 10 rounds.

"I was a foot away from it," Bolenbaugh said. "I thought for a second I might have been shot. It was very scary. Just traumatic. All I could think about was my wife and my unborn child."

The shooter then yelled something at the victim and ran out a side door of the building, according to Bolenbaugh.

"I immediately tried to stop the blood and started looking for wounds," he said of the shooting victim. "There was one shot in the neck, one in the cheek, and one in his side. There was so much blood."

The victim, a 23-year-old Kalamazoo man, was taken to a hospital where he died, police said.

The suspect was later arrested near Lafayette and West Michigan avenues, a couple miles from Wayside just west of the main Western Michigan University campus. He is

, according to Kalamazoo Public Safety.

Bolenbaugh said he didn't know what led to the confrontation between the two men.

After giving a statement to police, Bolenbaugh said, he went to see his wife, who works at Bronson Methodist Hospital and hugged her, still with blood on his clothes and hands.

"I'm still in shock," he said several hours after the shooting. "I have never been through anything like this. I don't know how you're supposed to feel."

Bolenbaugh said he was acquainted with the victim.

"He was a guy I played cards with. He was a wonderful guy, always smiling, always happy, always goofing around," he said. "He never caused trouble."