KEY POINTS:
An American-Chinese family who nabbed murder suspect Nai Yin Xue last week are likely to get the US$10,000 ($12,700) reward offered for his capture.
Xue, wanted for the murder of wife An Liu in Auckland last September, fled to America after abandoning his three-year-old daughter Quan Xun Xue in a Melbourne railway station.
Last week after Xue evaded police for nearly six months, six members of a Chinese family in the small town of Chamblee in Atlanta, Georgia, recognised him from a picture in a Chinese journal.
They double checked his image on the America's Most Wanted website before all six leapt on him, tying his hands with his belt and knotting his trousers around his ankles so he could not run off.
New Zealand police had told the US Marshals they would fund a US$10,000 reward for the capture of Xue and said today the family would probably be paid the reward.
"...it is just fair (that it be paid out) but there is a process to go through and we are just following it," Detective Senior Sergeant Simon Scott said. "They did a great job."
New Zealand's US police liaison officer Superintendent Sandra Manderson said Xue was being held by the American Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) in Atlanta where he had been visited by New Zealand police.
He was likely to be returned to New Zealand next week and would appear in Auckland District Court facing a murder charge.
- NZPA
