BIRMINGHAM, Alabama - A shoot-out on the interstate was the last thing J.P. Hargrove expected to encounter on his way home from work Friday night, but that's exactly what happened.

What was supposed to be a routine drive home ended with the 30-year-old Moody man capturing a dramatic photo of police with their guns drawn on Interstate 20/59 and wounded suspects down on the roadway ground. "Seriously in the middle of a gunfight on I-59 right now!!!!" Hargrove tweeted about 8 p.m. Later he tweeted his photo of the scene with the caption, "This is what happens when you run from the law and then start shooting at them."

The shooting happened about 8 p.m. on the interstate at the 22nd Street exit. Sources said Mayor William Bell and his security officers were on the way home from a fundraiser and driving along Eighth Avenue North when gunfire erupted from a car across from them at a traffic light. The mayor's security detail, sworn Birmingham police officers, followed the car while calling the situation into police dispatch and giving them a description of the suspect vehicle, a Lincoln Town Car. They continued to stay behind the car, and gunfire rang out again. The mayor's Chevrolet Suburban followed them up onto the interstate, turning on their lights and sirens.

Hargrove, a husband and father to three small children, had just left work at Princeton Baptist Medical Center. He was traveling in the middle lane northbound on Interstate 20/59 when he looked in his rearview mirror and saw a car flying up behind him.

He opted to get out of the way. "I got over into what would become the 22nd Street exit lane and that car got over into the far left lane,'' he said in an interview today with Al.com. "Then it came across all three lanes, ran headlong into the guardrail, flew up in the air and came back down, facing northbound."

He slowed down, and then stopped a short distance behind. "My first thought was 'Is anybody hurt?' he said. He was about to get out and check when a black Chevrolet Suburban pulled up and a plain clothes police officer, now known to be one of the mayor's security officers, got out of the car with his gun drawn. "I heard him yelling at them to get out of the car,'' Hargrove said. "He was crossing the lanes of traffic."

Then Hargrove heard gunfire. "The officer yelled, 'They're shooting, they're shooting,' " Hargove said. "He fired back. I had both my windows down so I put the seat back and got down below the dash."

By this time, the officer was near Hargrove's car. "I yelled at him, 'If you need cover, open my car door,''' he said. "There wasn't much protection for him out there." The officer did just that. Hargrove said in all, he heard about 15 to 20 shots fired. The officer, whose name hasn't been publicly released, stayed very much in control, Hargrove said.

Moments later, police swarmed the crime scene. "They got the suspects out of the car, and one of the officers was yelling, 'One of them jumped over the bridge,'' Hargrove said.

Hargrove said he was stopped at the scene for maybe 25 minutes. "It was amazing and very surreal,'' he said. "I have a wife and three kids at home, so I wanted to stay low."

The ordeal, he said, left him jittery. "I've never felt like my life was threatened before,'' he said. "But when the shooting started, I knew there was a possibility I could be hit. That's why I kept my head below the dash."

Hargrove didn't know until today that it was the mayor and his security detail involved in the shoot-out.

Police have not released any additional information about the suspects. The injuries to one of them are considered to be life-threatening; the other is expected to survive. The Alabama Bureau of Investigation is conducting the probe. Spokesman Sgt. Steve Jarrett said today they will not release any details on the incident, and will turn their findings over to the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office when their investigation is complete.