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A B.C. father suspected in the triple slaying of his children has been arrested after he was found by a local hunter in Merritt, in the B.C. Interior.

“He's got,” said Kim Robinson, the hunter credited with catching Mr. Schoenborn, in a brief interview Wednesday with The Globe and Mail.

Asked about the fugitive's condition, Mr. Robinson, a trapper and wilderness guide, would only say: “He's a hurting unit.”

Friends have said Mr. Robinson took it upon himself to go out looking for Mr. Schoenborn.

“It makes sense that anybody with a brain would want to go looking for him,” he said. “I've been guiding cougar hunters and bear hunters for 30 friggin' years. That's what I do, and trap.”

Mr. Schoenborn, 40, has been the subject of a police manhunt since the bodies of his three children were found in their home on April 6. He is the prime suspect in the slaying of Kaitlynne, 10, Max, 8, and Cordon, 5, whose bodies were discovered by their mother.

The RCMP said only that Mr. Schoenborn was found by a local resident and arrested around 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday near an area called Hamilton Hill, about 10 kilometres outside Merritt, a ranching community about 270 kilometres northeast of Vancouver. A new conference has been scheduled for late Wednesday afternoon.

Mr. Robinson's neighbour Kurt Mohr said Mr. Robinson has been out looking for the fugitive since the father of the three slain children was identified as a suspect in their deaths.

'A big tough redneck'

“He's lived out here quite a long time and knows the backroads and mountains quite well, where you could hide and where you could survive cold nights and stuff. He knows the area real well, probably better than any cop in Merritt,” he said.

Mr. Mohr is not surprised that Mr. Robinson would take a personal interest in the search. “He's just like that. He's a big tough redneck,” Mr. Mohr chuckled.

Mr. Mohr said Mr. Robinson had used one of his dogs – a Bull Mastiff – to help with the search. “I think he was just walking around with it,” he said.

Area resident Corrina Smith said her boyfriend got a call from a friend whose father is Mr. Robinson.

Ms. Smith said Mr. Schoenborn was found in the bush.

“They have him down on the highway now, last I heard,” Ms. Smith said. “The bloodhounds got him, just about chewed his arm off. Kim caught him and tied him to a tree.”

Ms. Smith said her boyfriend told her there are police all over the area now.

“He came home and told me I could unlock the doors,” said the mother of twins.

Sandra Nelson, who works at the Ponderosa Sports store in Merritt, said word was travelling quickly around town of about 7,000 about the capture and Mr. Robinson's role in it.

“Everybody laughs and says, ‘Hey. Right on. It was Kim.' There's that little bit of a pride thing involved too. It was one of our own that got him,” she said.

She declined comment on what Merritt residents thought about a private citizen instead of the police capturing the suspect.

But she said Mr. Robinson had called her, early on, to ask about some aspects of the case, notably what kind of “head start this guy had” and probably also spoke to the store's owner as well.

Ms. Nelson, noting she was awaiting specific details about how Mr. Schoenborn was captured, said that Mr. Robinson's role was to be expected.

“I am not at all surprised. That's the way Kim is. To begin with, he's the best there is at that, at tracking and that stuff. They don't come any better than that. And that's just the way Kim is. He'd do it for the community mainly, for the safety of everybody involved, including Allan (Schoenborn) himself…just to bring the whole thing to a happy ending, as happy as it could be, and the for the safety of the community and everything else,” said Ms. Nelson, who has known Mr. Robinson for about 25 years.

“That's what Kim does. If there's something to be found out there, he'll go and find it.”

“There was a job to be done and he just went and did it. Kim's not a guy to jump to judgment. We don't know if the guy's guilty or not. He may or may not be so the guy was out there and had to be found, whether he was dead, alive or otherwise.”

Mr. Robinson's role, she said, reflected one aspect of small-town life.

“(When) any adverse thing happens, the town rallies fairly fast and anybody who is good at what needs doing, they go and do it.”

Fear and relief

Merritt Mayor David Laird said Mr. Robinson was well-known around town for his wilderness skills. “Anybody that can make a living that way knows his way around the bush,” he said.

Mr. Laird said he was not aware that Mr. Robinson, who is married and has a family, had made it a personal mission to find Mr. Schoenborn.

And the mayor was diplomatic about the question of why it took a private citizen to find a fugitive when the police were on the case.

“The best news is that somebody has found him,” he said. “The community did feel he was around somewhere. It would be somebody who would have found him if not the RCMP. We're just glad somebody found him.”

He said he was waiting for additional details on how Mr. Robinson caught Mr. Schoenborn, noting his information about the capture had come from radio reports about Mr. Robinson's role in the matter.

Mr. Schoenborn hadn't been seen since the bodies of his children were discovered more than a week ago.

The case raised questions because RCMP did not inform the public for more than 20 hours that the children's father was the prime suspect and on the run.

Merritt resident Lola Anderson said news of Wednesday's arrest caught her by surprise. She learned of the capture when she turned on the TV news.

“We always kind of figured he was somewhere around town,” she said, noting there was plenty of bush in the area where Mr. Schoenborn could have hid.

She said area residents have been uneasy since Mr. Schoenborn was identified as the prime suspect in the deaths of his three children.

“You're always looking. Every time you see something, you're thinking, ‘Is that him?' I wasn't worried about myself, but for people who had kids.”

She noted her son was keeping his kids out of school until police captured Mr. Schoenborn.

“A lot of people didn't want to send their kids to school, especially the school where the family was going. Everyone will now get back on track because life goes on,” she said.

Mr. Schoenborn had been arrested at his children's school a few days before the killings and charged with uttering threats. A justice of the peace released him on bail, unaware of a peace bond that restricted Mr. Schoenborn's contact with his wife, Darcie Clarke.

Mr. Schoenborn was arrested two other times the week before the children's deaths.

A coroner's inquest has already been announced into the deaths.

With a report from Canadian Press