Leticia Sheikh and her husband were sitting at their kitchen table while her brother, a retired police officer, played his harmonica. They got up to get the children to school and were about to leave the house when a shot rang out.

“He was so sad at first, but then we thought he was talking to an old friend,” Sheikh said Wednesday. “I put my hands around his abdomen and I told him, ‘Don’t kill me, I was not here.'”

Another family member said that shortly after the shooting, a relative spotted the assailant walking away from the scene at a jogger’s pace. The relative then found her husband in a nearby bar.

“He said the guy who took his brother was laughing at him, saying, ‘It’s me now,'” the relative told ABC News. “I was shocked they survived after that.”

“I don’t like to think about what happened,” she continued. “We’re going to grieve, but there’s nobody I would want to bury.”

Al Jazeera and wire services. Al Jazeera and wire services.

Al Jazeera and wire services.

A family friend said that the husband was being treated for non-life threatening injuries at UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Mount Olive, about 40 miles north of Charlotte, where he was taken to be treated for his injuries.

On Thursday, the Charlotte Observer reported that authorities had arrested the suspect on the city’s north side. According to investigators, the suspect, identified as 25-year-old Michael Wayne Rigsby, arrived in Charlotte on Thursday at a gas station and was later arrested there by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department.

Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts told reporters outside of the hospital that the suspect was treated and released, but that investigators believe “there is an ongoing threat” to the area around the Pulse nightclub, noting that the shooting is the country’s most deadly shooting since the 1996 bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Atlanta.

Police say the suspect’s motive remained unknown and did not immediately provide further information about the incident.

“We don’t know that,” Roberts said. “But he’s a dangerous person who we would not want to meet and talk with.”

Police were looking for a Nissan Altima and another vehicle they believed were linked to the shooting.

According to the Associated Press, the suspect is “a white male with black hair and