http://news.national...f-defence-laws/
"On a rainy day in May 2010, Joe and Marilyn Singleton returned from dinner to their rural acreage near Taber, Alta.
The couple usually left the lights off to save energy. But on this night, the lights were on and a dilapidated station wagon was in the driveway. Mr. Singleton parked behind it and headed through the garage, grabbing a small hatchet used to chop kindling on his way in.
Inside, the house had been trashed — furniture knocked over, dishes smashed, pictures torn off the wall; jewellery, cash and video games were missing.
Mr. Singleton left his wife to call 911 and headed out into the driveway, where a burglar was trying to flee in the station wagon.
“I told him to sit there, the police are coming, we’ll sort it out,” he recalled in his first public interview. “That’s when he put his car in reverse and smashed into our car.
“Then he put the car into drive and it was then I thought, my God he’s going to smash into the garage door to get away and my wife was right on the other side.”
He reached into the open driver’s side window and hit the man twice in the face with the blunt end of the hatchet. The thief ran and got tangled up in a barbed-wire fence.
When the RCMP arrived 20 minutes later, they intercepted two more thieves who had gone to get a pickup truck because their car was too small to carry away all the stolen loot.
If this was Hollywood, this is where Mr. Singleton’s story likely would have ended. But in a tale that has become a familiar real-life refrain, the injured thief, a 19-year-old repeat offender who was out on bail after threatening another homeowner with a crowbar, received house arrest for the burglary.
Mr. Singleton, whose only run-in with the law was a speeding ticket six years earlier, was charged with assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm, offences that carry up to 10 years in prison."
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me: you can read the rest of the article, including why he was charged and what changes have been suggested.