Armed with a rifle and his toughest dog, Kim Robinson had been striding through the bush near Merritt, B.C. for days, looking for the suspect in the murder of three young children and prepared to do something if he found him.
Robinson, who keeps a bear claw in his pocket and a hunting knife on his belt, has become a bit of a reluctant folk hero in the days since he delivered Allan Schoenborn to police on Wednesday.
But one person's definition of hero may be another's definition of vigilante and those are rare in Canada and discouraged by authorities.
"If this had been Hicksville, U.S.A., every guy that had any jam and his dog would be out there looking for him, and we would have had him,'' Robinson said, shrugging off suggestions his work was extraordinary.
When Schoenborn asked Robinson if he was going to kill him, Robinson replied no, but he would if he had to.
The idea of vigilante justice conjures up the thought of Charles Bronson's ''Death Wish'' movies, or "The Punisher'' comic series.
Those saw formerly mild-mannered men take to the streets with newfound bloodlust to avenge the murders of their families.
But Neil Boyd, a professor of criminology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, said it's rare that ordinary citizens take down wanted fugitives.
For obvious reasons, he said, idealistic citizens should never take the law into their own hands.
"I think it's dangerous for all kinds of reasons for citizens to be taking up arms against people who are alleged to have committed a crime.''
Aside from the presumption of an accused person being innocent until proven guilty, the average person doesn't have a police officer's training, Boyd said.
"They don't have the same skill set, the same knowledge base. That's why we have police.''
"I think it's a bad system to imagine a society in which everyone has a pick-up truck and a shotgun and heads out into the hills.''
That description might sum up Shannon McGauley.
He's the president of the Texas Minutemen, a group of citizens that touts itself as extra eyes and ears for overstretched federal agents at the border between the United States and Mexico.
Armed, they roam the tracts of land that separate the two countries, reporting suspicious activity to border agents.
McGauley is also a former bounty hunter, having worked with bail bondsmen to track down fugitives that try to avoid trial after being issued bail.
"What's tricky about apprehending somebody that's at large -- you don't want to make a mistake and get the wrong person,'' he said by phone from Texas.
"Sometimes photos aren't real reliable,'' and things could go bad, fast, if a would-be vigilante makes assumptions and mistakes identity.
There's also the possibility that the citizen will take matters into his or her own hands.
"It's a good thing, as long as the person doing it doesn't go overboard,'' McGauley said. "Whatever rules we expect the police to follow, we must follow ourselves.''
Still, he said, it's usually the police, not the average person, who tracks down a fugitive.
One exception was this past February, when a magazine publisher accused of killing his wife in New Zealand and abandoning his daughter in Australia was apprehended by concerned residents -- in Chamblee, Georgia.
Six men who recognized the man from media reports jumped on him, bound his ankles with his belt and pants, tied his hands behind his back, and sat on him until police arrived.
Police generally advise the public to avoid those sorts of confrontations, Boyd said.
"We've always got cases of people who run down robbers from their store. But you don't want to lose your life for your convenience store.''
That's happened before.
"Grant's Law,'' which requires B.C. drivers in urban areas to pay for their gas before they pump it, came into effect in January.
It's named after Grant De Patie. He was killed trying to prevent a motorist from fleeing with stolen gas at a station in Maple Ridge, B.C.
