A Golden Bay man who set one of the first fires at the Parliament protests was sentenced today to home detention and community service.
Now 1News can reveal an online group of Kiwis, who don't know each other's identities, took it upon themselves to track him down.
Jordan Turner-Critchley was remorseful when appearing the Wellington District Court today. But the judge underlined how serious his offending was.
The judge told him: "The fire you lit changed the complexion of the protest, leading other protesters to light and fuel other fires as a result."
Turner-Critchley plead guilty to doing a dangerous act and rioting, all relating to the last day of the Parliament protest in March 2022.
Footage from the day shows Turner-Critchley, who is covering his face, going into a tent and a short time later the tent is alight.
In court today his lawyer Kevin Preston conveyed his remorse.
"He very much regrets getting involved in what became a riot and his intentions in attending Parliament were borne out of his frustration and objections to the mandates."
'We can't let them get away with this'
In the weeks following the protest a group of Kiwis took it upon themselves to track down some of those responsible for what happened on the last day of the protest.
1News has interviewed two people from the group. David said during the protest he connected with others online who were equally outraged.
"In a lot of ways it's kind of a sacred place and to see people disrespecting it in that way was pretty bad...we were just like, we can't let them get away with this."
David said at it's height there were around 100 people in the group, but a core group of around 25 did the ongoing research.
"It was just a totally random, anonymous group of people," David said. "I still don't know the names of anyone else in that group."
Another of the members, Will (not his real name), said he became annoyed when the protesters took over the bus station and he couldn't get to work.
"They started blaming Pplice for lighting the fires. … It was obvious the police had nothing to do with it and we thought that we could prove it."
The group trawled through hours of livestreams and were particularly focused on tracking down a man in bright pants and a black hoodie, who set one of the first fires.
"We had a breakthrough when we realised that actually they'd been at the protest, they'd been at the frontline of the protest about 6.30 in the morning. And they hadn't been wearing a mask or face coverings at that point so then we had their face."
They discovered he was with a woman for much of the protest, using a logo from her clothing to track her down on social media, eventually revealing the pairs identities.
How it played out
Around two weeks after the end of the protest 1News was contacted by someone in the group. They gave the names of Jordan Turner-Critchley and Sarah Henry as being people who were involved in setting the fires at Parliament.
1News contacted police who said they couldn't comment as it was part of an ongoing investigation.
The group had passed on their research to police and around two months later received a call to confirm some information. A short time after that Turner-Critchley and Henry were charged.
Will said the group was careful with how they approached it and ultimately hope they helped police with the investigation.
"I’m not a fan of vigilante justice in general, you know the mob going after people. Ultimately all we did was look at publicly available information and the intel and hand it to police.
"You can’t just occupy Parliament and set it on fire and get away with it. Even if you try to disguise yourself someone’s going to find you."
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