A community tired of seeing thieves getting the best of their neighbours stepped up to stop the theft of an ATV near Florence.
Monday, Julian Gervais was working at his uncle’s farm just over the Chatham-Kent/Lambton Line in Zone Centre. He had an ATV and a trailer out moving steel stands for the greenhouses.
“I heard the four-wheeler start up and then I hear it hit the rev limiter four or five times and I thought – that’s odd. Then I remembered my uncle telling me somebody tried to break into a shed earlier down the road. I thought ‘something’s not right’ and I ran over there.”

By the time Gervais ran to see what was going on, the thief had taken the ATV and the trailer and headed down the road.

Jason Badder just happened to be traveling in the area at the time.

“The guy pulled out of the farm fast with a trailer of flower beds on the back of it, the steel beds, and two or three of them fell off in front of my vehicle.”

Badder pulled over assuming a worker didn’t realize they’d lost the equipment.

Then Gervais – a friend of Badder’s son – came running out the driveway saying the four-wheeler was stolen. Badder and Gervais hopped in the car and followed him.

Gervais called 9-1-1 and then friends to let them know what was going on. By this time, the thief had removed the trailer and was making his way down the back roads trying to escape.

That’s when the neighbours started to arrive.

They lined the gravel roads around the bush and field the ATV had entered making it impossible for him to leave without being followed.

“At first there were only four or five people there and then we called other people; finally I think we had enough that he knew he couldn’t get out,” says Gervais. “He got on the road once and got over to another, but after that, he couldn’t. He tried it a couple of times but he couldn’t get out because of the people there,” says Gervais.

He estimates there may have been as many as 30 or 40 vehicles on the roads in a matter of minutes.

Police arrived and tracked the man down and arrested him. And the four-wheeler was turned over Gervais and his uncle, Luke Demaiter.

While no one wants to face down a thief, Gervais says it was amazing to see the community come together.

He suspects they did it because they’re tired of “losing stuff” to thieves.

“I’ve never seen anything like it…there have been some break-ins around lately and this was cool to see that all the neighbours got together to help.
“It was pretty heartwarming to see that.”