A group of police officers chased a suspect through residential backyards following a crash on Route 22.

The hectic scene happened in a Mountainside neighborhood Friday afternoon, just feet from Hector Veron’s home.

“It was cops everywhere running through yards, up the street, closing off roads. I mean, they set up a perimeter,” he says.

Vernon says that he was working from his Robin Hood Road home when he heard a crash out on nearby Route 22. He says that by the time he got up to look at what happened the suspect driver had run into his neighborhood.

"He came up the woods, went through my backyard, through my neighbor’s backyard,” Veron says. “Then I was coming back up 22, my neighbor came out saying, ‘Did you see the guy in your yard?’ I didn’t see him…and that's what he was hiding in the bushes behind my neighbor’s home."

Veron says that shortly after police swarmed the neighborhood looking for the man. They seemed to have found him on Larkspur Drive a short distance away.

"Not too shortly after that we heard a gunshot,” Veron says.

The Union County Prosecutor’s Office has not released any details about the case, including who the suspect is or what he was wanted for. The office did say that the shooting response team is investigating.

Veron says that he is just grateful that his family is OK. He says that this all happened just a short time before his children were getting home from school.

"Our concern was he could possibly turn it into a situation where he might try and overtake a school bus with kids, so we're glad that it was done relatively quickly,” he says.

The crash snarled traffic on Route 22 for hours as investigators worked to collect evidence from the scene.