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Daily Voice first reported the aborted deal-turned-pursuit on Tuesday, after authorities cordoned off Fort Lee neighborhood around the New York Avenue driveway where Andrew Herrera, 24, abandoned the badly damaged Mercedes.
SEE: Thwarted Undercover Drug Deal Leads To Pursuit, Fort Lee House Search
Police who terminated the pursuit out of safety concerns conducted a house-by-house search after finding the car with its front end smashed in.
Dozens of marked and unmarked law enforcement vehicles converged on the area.
Fort Lee High School was briefly placed on lockdown. Residents were asked to keep their doors locked.
"There was concern that they might have been hiding out in one of the houses" in the neighborhood, a law enforcement investigator told Daily Voice. "They probably scurried across the [George Washington] Bridge."
Detectives tracked down Herrera, of West 169th Street, in New York City on Wednesday, Acting Bergen County Prosecutor Dennis Calo said.
He was being held in Manhattan pending extradition to Bergen County, Calo said Friday.
Herrera, who was with an unidentified accomplice when he took off on Tuesday, is charged with drug possession with the intent to distribute it, attempted aggravated assault on a police officer, eluding while creating the risk of death or injury, eluding, hindering and resisting arrest.
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ALSO SEE: A shoplifter who left her 9-year-old daughter behind while trying to flee the Englewood ShopRite was arrested soon after, authorities said.
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