To arrest someone is (quite simply) to restrict their freedom of movement. If you prevent someone from going where that person wants to go, exactly WHEN that person wants to leave, and say that you are "DETAINING" him, you are in violation of the law. It doesn't matter if you use the word "detain", the fact remains that you have arrested someone with no legal authority to do so. People think "arrest" means that a uniformed police officer slaps cuffs on you, throws you in the back of his cruiser and hauls you off to jail. While that does meet the definition of arrest, there is a lot more involved in that situation than a simple ARREST.
There is no such thing as a right of detaining someone, even if you think that person might have violated a law. There are VERY SPECIFIC circumstances under which a civilian may ARREST someone else. A couple of these are often referred to as shopkeeper's privilege and citizen's arrest. As this situation had nothing to do with shoplifting, we'd have to evaluate it on the basis of citizen's arrest:
Citizen's arrest laws vary from state to state, but generally: In order for the citizen's arrest to be lawful, you must arrest the perp while the perp is in the process of committing a FELONY (an act for which a conviction would mean mandatory time in prison). If someone states "I'm going to kill you", that does not qualify as a felony. It is a misdemeanor, if it can be proven. If someone ATTEMPTS to kill you (or someone else) that WOULD qualify as a felony. So if you were to restrict someone's freedom of movement while they were trying to kill someone, that would PROBABLY be a legal citizen's arrest. If the perp flees the scene of the crime however, then that perp is no longer *actively* engaged in felonious criminal activity, so while the perp is fleeing, you can NOT make a lawful citizen's arrest.
For the family to chase down this perp AFTER THE FACT of possibly committing a misdemeanor, and try to detain him, was unlawful. It was an illegal vigilante action, at best. During this illegal vigilante action, one of the perps pulled a gun. So on top of unlawfully arresting someone who (at worst) never committed a felony, and was not actively engaged in breaking any law, the perps also committed some kind of weapons violation, which might have been felonious criminal activity on the part of the vigilantes. Or put another way, if you have no right to arrest someone to begin with, it is stupid in the extreme to use a firearm to arrest someone, as you've just upped the charges against yourself from unlawful arrest (probably a misdemeanor) to a weapons charge which will probably mean mandatory time in prison.
It is extremely important that you realize that citizen's arrest is an action which must meet very specific requirements in order to be LAWFUL. If ALL of those requirements are NOT met, then YOU are engaged in criminal activity simply by attempting to restrict someone's freedom of movement in any manner. A road rage incident where words are exchanged, no physical injury is involved and no property damage is involved could never in any stretch of the imagination qualify for a incident in which citizen's arrest might be lawful. There has to be a felony first. But even if there WAS a felony (and there wasn't), citizen's arrest no longer would be applicable, after the perp leaves the scene of the crime. -Dave
