A Swansea police officer responding to a house alarm foiled a home burglary late Tuesday morning.

An officer responded to a residential alarm at 11:05 a.m. in the 1900 block of Llewellyn Road. When the officer arrived, he noticed the back porch door was ajar. When the officer entered the home, the suspect ran out of the house, according to Swansea Police Chief Mike Arnold.

The officer identified himself as a police officer, but the suspect continued to run.

Police searched the area and were assisted by officers from the St. Clair County Sheriff's Department, Belleville police and Fairview Heights police. Police also alerted MetroLink security, since the search was near the Memorial Hospital MetroLink Station.

Police searched for about two hours but could not locate the suspect.

Then a call came in from Belleville police at 1:05 p.m. that a resident saw a subject matching the suspect's description in a backyard of a home in the Turtle Creek subdivision, just south of the Llewellyn Road address, Arnold said.

Then an officer spotted the suspect walking up the steps to the MetroLink station. The suspect was arrested before 1:30 p.m. near the train platform.