An outdoor adventure Sunday turned out to be more than a peaceful stoll in the woods for several hikers.
Davanh DiMarco and Scott Mitchell were hiking at Runyon Canyon when they spotted a man coming out of bushes.
"I'm like that's odd, but maybe he was just trying to go to the rugged terrain. Then, like 15 seconds later, the tree was on fire," DiMarco told KCAL.
Mitchell, a former wide receiver at the University of Kentucky, ran after him. As he prevented the man, much smaller than him, from running away, other hikers joined him.
One woman shouted at the suspect.
"Guy's about 150 yards away. I had to track him down, run him down," Mitchell said.
The group applauded when park rangers handcuffed the man.
"We feel the magnitude more now because we understand what it could have been," Mitchell said.
The flames burned near a scar, one of the several wildfires that threatened Los Angeles County homes in January. Firefighters, who called in aerial support for water drops, held it to less than an acre.
